


Hat Trick

by fairwinds09



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: 2018 Winter Olympics, F/M, Hockey games, can't believe i'm actually doing this, copious amounts of beer, secretive ice-dancing romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-03-24 03:22:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: Scott unwinds with beer, hockey, and chirping at the refs. It's Patrick's job to keep him from doing anything else.(A look at the possibilities inherent in the iconic moment that spawned an internet's worth of proud Canadian memes.)





	1. First Goal

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe I am doing this. I have never, in my entire experience as a fanfic writer, been inclined to write RPF. It seemed a bridge too far - too personal, too real, something that I just wasn't willing to do. 
> 
> And then Pyeongchang 2018 happened, and Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir showed up on my screen for the third time in eight years, and...I broke. I just broke. This ship has broken me, and I can't even make any excuses. Between that sizzling short dance and the sheer heartbreaking romance of Moulin Rouge, I am just done. 
> 
> So. I started writing in order to process the sheer glory that is Virtue/Moir. I found this fandom, and the amazingly talented writers therein. I kept writing, but decided not to do anything with it. And then my gorgeous beta told me to be brave and put this out there, and so I shall.
> 
> This story is based on that hilarious coverage of Scott Moir, beer in hand, screaming at the refs during the hockey match between the U.S. and Canadian women while Patrick Chan gives him major side-eye and tries to duck out of the way. The more I saw it, the more I wondered, "What the hell else is that boy up to?" And then this ridiculous little fic was born. 
> 
> Long note, but there you have it. Hope you enjoy - let me know what you think!
> 
> P.S. Tessa and Scott, if you ever happen to find this, I'm sorry. Truly. ;)

It is currently 2:00 in the afternoon, the women’s hockey match is about fifteen minutes underway, and Scott is now on his third beer.

Which is fine. Just fine. Patrick doesn’t begrudge him beer and hockey in the least. He’s been under a hell of a lot of pressure over the past few days - first the short dance, and then the free, and the constant knowledge that the French could edge them out with fractions of a point. He and Tessa stood up to it all, and their triumph was...well, epic. It’s a stupid word, but it works. But even epic takes a toll. The adrenaline spikes, the exhaustion that follows. He knows it well himself, has known it for years.

And then there’s been the endless barrage of the media, until both of them were doing interviews with dark circles under their eyes and Scott had started slipping up and saying things that made Tessa give him The Look (or pinch him under the table). It made Patrick laugh - actually, it made the entire Canadian figure skating contingent laugh, with some sympathy sprinkled in. They’re not lying when they tell the media they’re like a family, and, like a family, they’re all pretty well aware of what’s going on with Scott and Tessa behind the scenes. They are also very aware of the fact that the two of them want some space and time to figure out the story they want to tell the world about their personal lives. All of them respect that desire.

This does not, however, make it any less funny when Scott slips up outside the arena and almost says in front of God and everybody that they fell back in love with skating, _and_ with each other. Or when someone makes them play one of those absurd newlywed games and asks about Tessa’s eyes, and his face drifts into an expression of sheer bliss as he murmurs, “Green. Gorgeous green.” (Patrick is not ashamed to admit that he and Andrew giggled over that one for five solid minutes.) Eric and Meagan maintain that the best moment of all was the ninetieth time someone asked them about their relationship status and Scott popped off with “None of your business,” followed by a diva snap.

Anyway. All of this goes to emphasize that Scott needs a beer. He needs a beer (or three), and some relaxation, and hockey with the guys. That’s all fine and well, even if it’s only twenty minutes into the game and he’s already started mouthing the refs. Patrick has had half a beer himself, and the game is heating up, and if Scott wants to down three beers and yell a bit, he has a right.

Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that Scott hadn’t eaten for hours. Several hours. That, and he’s coming down off an enormous and very long-lasting adrenaline high. So, round about the end of beer Number Three, Patrick begins to catch on to the fact that his good friend and fellow team member, gold medalist Scott Moir, is well and truly buzzed.

Not drunk. Patrick knows drunk Scott. Hell, he has hauled drunk Scott home a time or two before, or back to his hotel room when they’re on tour. He has listened to long, miserable rants from drunk Scott about Marina, or the utter unfairness of the ISU, or a myriad of other things. (Most of them, honestly, were about Tessa, but they have a tacit understanding that no one is allowed to mention that after the fact.)

This is not drunk Scott, who tends to get a little bitter and lachrymose...or sentimental and lachrymose, which is worse. This is happily buzzed Scott, who is currently passing out beers to anyone who will take them and cheering delightedly whenever it looks like the Canadian women are anywhere close to making a goal.

“Chiddy! Want another beer?” he yells, and grins that enormous goofy grin that never stops reminding Patrick of the wide-eyed boy from Ilderton he met years ago.

“I’m good,” he says, and smiles. They’re under so much pressure at these Games, and it’s nice to see one of his best friends having a good time.

“Okay!” Scott hollers, and then he claps a hand to his pocket and digs out his phone.

“Oh, shit,” he mutters. Patrick raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Tessa. Gala practice. I’m supposed to go.”

Patrick laughs, because only Scott Moir would completely and totally forget about mandatory gala practice to go to a hockey game.

“You going to head out?” he asks, even though he’s pretty sure of the answer.

“Nah. She won’t be too mad. She always remembers the choreography for both of us. I’ll be fine.”

Patrick thinks privately that it is extremely doubtful that Tessa is going to be just ducky with her partner skipping out on gala practice, but he decides to keep his opinions to himself.

It’s only a few minutes later that the refs make an extremely asinine call, and Scott spring to his feet, arms thrown wide.

“ _ARE YOU KIDDING ME?_ ” he bawls at the top of his lungs, narrowly missing Patrick’s face as his left hand gestures wildly. “ _Wake up!_ ”

Patrick gives him the side-eye.

“Would you sit _down?_ ” he huffs, and discreetly tugs at the back of Scott’s jacket. He plops back into his chair, cups one hand around his mouth, and then proceeds to yell _Booooo_ stridently across the stands.

“Give me that,” Patrick says, and tries to pry the beer out of Scott’s hand. Scott gives him an incredibly wounded look.

“That’s mine,” he says, as if he thinks that Patrick somehow doesn’t know this.

“Yes, I know,” Patrick says, and gives up trying to take it away. “Would you sit down and be quiet before we all get thrown out on our asses?”

Scott gives him a speaking glance and takes another gulp.

“You’re no fun,” he observes, and then leans down to talk to one of the guys in the row below them. Patrick feels his pocket buzz and digs out his phone. Tessa’s face pops up next to the little message box.

_\--What the hell is he DOING?_

Patrick grins widely.

_\--How did you know?_

There’s a pause, and then a screenshot pops up, and another, and another. Apparently Twitter is extremely excited about a mostly-drunk Scott Moir yelling at the refs. There’s even something about him becoming a Canadian heritage moment.

 _\--You have got to be kidding me_ , Patrick types back. _Anyway, aren’t you at gala practice?_

 _\--We’re taking a break_ , she replies. _Just make sure he’s okay, please?_

Patrick smiles and shakes his head. These two. He knows that the entire world thinks that Scott is the sentimental sap of the pair, but she’s not far behind.

 _\--He’s good, I’ve got him_ , he types out. _I won’t let him get kicked out_.

She sends back a smiley face and then presumably goes back to practice, because his phone stays silent. Scott, in the meantime, is staying in his seat, which is a relief. After a few minutes, he digs out his phone and starts typing something.

Normally, Patrick would mind his own business. But this is not exactly normal Scott, and he promised Tessa, and all in all, he really thinks he’s justified in leaning over to peek at Scott’s screen.

 _\--hey babe_ , it reads. _still mad i skipped practice?_

 _Jealous, mostly_ , she types back.

_\--u wearing those leggings? the black ones?_

Patrick fights the urge to roll his eyes. No matter what he promised Tessa, he is _not_ sitting through any conversation that involves clothing, or the removal thereof. 

 _\--Yes_ , she sends back, with a little winky face emoji, and Scott smirks like he’s won another gold medal. He’s about to send something back when the roar of the crowd distracts him. Canada makes a massive play, and then they’re all on their feet, screaming and whooping, Scott whipping his toque off his head and swinging it around like a madman. By the time everyone’s calmed down and they’re all back in their seats, he seems to have forgotten all about texting Tessa.

Five minutes later, while they’re waiting on a call from the refs, Patrick notices that he’s got his phone out again. The third beer is now gone, and Scott is progressing rapidly towards pleasantly tipsy instead of just cheerfully buzzed. This is fine - it’ll wear off by the end of the game, Patrick knows, as long as he’s kept away from any more adult beverages. But in the meantime…

He glances over, just to check on his friend, and what he sees on Scott’s phone makes his stomach drop. Somehow or other, Scott has opened up his Twitter app and doesn’t seem to realise it, not if what he’s typing is any indication.

_\--u know u look so hot in those. when we get back to the village tonight..._

Patrick grabs his arm, hard.

“Give me that!” he hisses frantically. “Right now. Give me your phone.”

Scott stares at him.

“Huh?” he says, and looks like he’s about to go back to typing. Patrick can _feel_ the desperation leaking out of his pores.

“ _Give me your damn phone_ ,” he mutters, because he doesn’t want to cause too much of a scene. “You’re on Twitter, you idiot. And if you hit the wrong button, you are dead. _Dead_ , do you hear me?”

Scott’s eyes widen comically as he stares down at his phone, then back at Patrick, and then at his phone again.

“Just...give it here,” Patrick snaps, and then physically wrests the phone from Scott’s hand. Thank God nobody had inadvertently clicked on anything during the struggle. He quickly deletes the Tweet and prays to whatever gods are out there that Scott hadn’t done anything else stupid before this.

“You didn’t text anybody in the last couple of minutes, did you?” he asks, just to be sure. It’s a wasted effort, because Scott’s leaning over and loudly debating with someone two seats over about whether or not Canada should be in the penalty box.

“Jesus,” Patrick mutters under his breath, and sticks Scott’s phone in his pocket for safekeeping. On second thought, he pulls out his own phone and shoots Tessa a quick text.

 _\--I have Scott’s phone for the moment_ , he taps out with one eye trained firmly on Scott. _Seemed like a good idea._

Two minutes later, his phone buzzes.

_\--What did he do?_

_\--Nothing. Yet._ _There was a moment with Twitter, but I think it’s all good for now._

He can just imagine Tessa’s reaction. She’s most of the reason that their relationship is still under wraps, because (as they all know), Scott can’t really keep a secret to save his life. Hence the numerous blunders in their post-win interviews. But for her, he’ll try, and she’s made it abundantly clear that he’d better do so or face the consequences.

 _\--Bloody hell_ , she texts back. Patrick’s eyebrows go up. Tessa Virtue can swear - he’s heard it before, and it’s hilarious. But she doesn’t do it often, and it’s always for emphasis.

 _\--Don’t panic, it’s okay_ , he tells her. _I’ve got an eye on him. Nothing happened._

 _\--All right_ , she sends back, which is relatively snippy for Tessa, no emojis or anything. Scott looks over his shoulder at this point, the fuzzy little ball on the top of his toque tickling Patrick’s cheek.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks, sounding a little loose.

“Texting your girlfriend,” Patrick half-whispers. “So you don’t end up in deep shit when we get back to the village. Watch the game, eh?”

Scott shrugs.

“ _I_ should text T,” he announces, a bit too loudly. Patrick winces. “I have to tell her that we’ll be getting back late. She usually waits up, y’know.”

Patrick pats his arm gently.

“That’s very nice,” he says. “Might not want to announce it at top volume in front of an entire Olympic stadium, but - nice!”

Scott grins happily.

“Kaitlyn’s off with Andrew,” he announces, still at considerable volume, considering what they’re talking about. “So T’s by herself tonight. And that means - ”

“And that means that you should probably keep your damn voice down,” Patrick interjects before his friend accidentally lets slip that he’s sleeping with Tessa Virtue in front of God and everybody at an Olympic hockey match. “Jesus, Moir, do you _want_ her to kill you?”

Scott gets momentarily distracted by the game, but when there’s a lull, he looks back over his left shoulder and beams fuzzily.

“Chiddy,” he says fondly, and slaps Patrick’s knee. “Chiddy, she’s not gonna kill me. I’m her...her partner. Mmm. Dance partner. Other kind of partner. You know.”

Patrick stares at him and hopes devoutly that the two Americans sitting behind them aren’t listening very hard.

“Exactly how many beers have you _had?_ ” he asks incredulously. He’s never seen Scott this tipsy from three lousy beers.

“Well,” Scott says slowly, thinking. “I had one outside. And two at the beginning of the game. And then this one.” He waggles his empty cup. “And half of his - ” He points below him. “So...four and a half?”

“And when was the last time you ate?”

“Dunno!”

Patrick sighs. Heavily. And then sighs again.

“Where’s my phone?” Scott asks, very cheerfully and very loudly. “I have to text Tessa. We have plans tonight, y’know.”

Keegan turns to look at him, one brow raised, and Patrick shakes his head in an unmistakable warning.

“What the _hell?_ ” Keegan mouths while Scott is busy glaring fiercely in the direction of the refs.

Patrick shrugs.

“Let me see your phone,” Scott tells Keegan. “I’m texting T, and Patrick has mine.”

Keegan stares at the both of them. “He has your what?”

“My phone!” Scott announces, and holds out his hand. Bewildered, Keegan hands him his Samsung.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Yeah, sure.”

Scott is trying to unlock it when Patrick snatches the phone from his hands.

“No,” he says firmly. “Absolutely not. No phones. No texting. No tweeting. No _anything_ until you are 100% sober. God only knows what you’d send out right now.”

Scott gives him an outraged glance.

“I have to talk to T,” he says. “It’s _important_.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is,” Patrick says, and tries hard to not give into the temptation to whack his friend upside the head. “But, you know, maybe not in the middle of a crowded arena. Or on Twitter.”

“But I have to tell her - ”

“Scott.”

“What? Oh, fuck, did you _see_ that play? Why the hell are the refs not getting involved _now?!_ What the fucking hell?”

Patrick blinks. Sometimes fate is actually kind to him. Sometimes.

“Terrible,” he says, with only a small amount of deception. “It was terrible. Yes. Absolutely. Fuck those refs.”

Scott gets absorbed in a fervent round of catcalling, and Patrick breathes a sigh of relief.

It’s going to be _fine_.

* * *

 

And everything _is_ fine, until one of those American idiots sitting in the row above them decides to open his big mouth.

“Dude!” he says, after Scott gets excited and hops up and down while yelling something that sounded remarkably like French gutter slang. Patrick makes a mental note to ask Patch exactly _what_ kind of French lessons Scott’s been taking, because he’s pretty sure that Tessa and Marie-France did not teach him that particular term.

“Dude,” the big American tries again. “Hey, aren’t you that ice dancer guy? The one who won the gold medal?”

Scott may be a little past buzzed, and he may be screaming his lungs out at an American team, but he hasn’t lost his manners.

“Hey, yeah,” he says, turning around and grinning easily. “Yeah, that’s me.”

The American sizes him up, eyes narrowed.

“The one with the hot partner, right?” he says, and there’s something unpleasant in his tone. Patrick finds himself tensing in his seat.

“What, T?” Scott wants to know, and Patrick is suddenly very grateful that Scott’s operating on a mostly empty stomach and a whole hell of a lot of beer right now. In all the years they’ve been friends, he’s never seen Scott deal well with _any_ man being interested in Tessa. The one time Patrick had ever tried to go out with her (which crashed and burned almost immediately), Scott didn’t speak to him for over a week.

“Yeah…” the American breathes, the corner of his mouth curling up. It’s not a good look on him. “She’s something, man. Got legs for miles, and dude, that ass. I can just imagine - ”

He doesn’t get much further than that, because there’s a sound like a growl tearing itself out of Scott’s throat, and before anybody realises what’s happening, he’s lunging at the other man with murder in his eyes. The only reason it doesn’t immediately turn into a knock-down, drag-out brawl is because Patrick grabs the back of his jacket and Keegan grabs his arm, and together they haul him down into his seat.

“Do you mind just shutting up?” Keegan snaps at the American and his buddy, both of whom have their fists raised like a couple of frat boys. “That’s his partner, for fuck’s sake.”

“And my friend,” Patrick adds soberly. He doesn’t blame Scott for trying to charge those two assholes. Hearing them talk about Tessa like that, he’d kind of wanted to knock them out himself.

“Let _go_ of me,” Scott insists, wriggling, and Patrick glances around frantically, hoping like hell there aren’t any cameras trained on them right now. This is the last thing any of them needs, especially Scott. For one thing, if Tessa finds out, she’ll kill him.

“Would you just calm down, for God’s sake?” Patrick stage-whispers. He gestures for Keegan to keep hold of Scott’s arm; no need to take chances here. “Look, we get it. He’s a dick, and he has no right to talk about her that way. But if you make a scene in here, we _will_ get kicked out on our asses, and that will _not_ look good for Team Canada, okay? Look at the big picture here.”

Scott stares straight ahead of him for a long moment, breath shuddering in and out, and finally he nods once, short and sharp.

“All right, fine,” he says, and he sounds more sober than he has all night. “I won’t do anything stupid. Let me go.”

Patrick and Keegan exchange a nervous glance, but they do as he says.

“Give me my phone,” he says, and there’s an unspoken _don’t fuck with me_ in his voice. Patrick isn’t at all sure this is a good idea, but he does it anyway. There’s a certain boundary there that, even after all their years of friendship, he doesn’t think he should cross.

He does, however, side-eye Scott’s conversation, which is in fact via text and not Twitter.

 _\--coming to see u after the game_ is all he sends, and it’s to the right person, so Patrick breathes a little easier.

And then Scott downs another beer, starts screaming his head off again, and seems to completely forget that American assholes have ever existed.


	2. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fact that Patrick gets both of them back to their rooms in the village is in itself worthy of a gold medal. 
> 
> And then, of course, there's the whole _thing_ with Tessa and Scott. 
> 
> (otherwise known as Not All Superheroes Wear Capes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, y'all. I know this is a hot fandom right now, but the reaction to this fic has been absolutely _stupendous_. Thank you so much for the kudos and comments (especially the comments). They absolutely make my day! 
> 
> To be perfectly honest, when I began writing this thing, it was mostly as a) a way to deal with the ridiculousness that is Virtue/Moir, and b) a present for my lovely beta. In other words, I had no plan, just a really gorgeous Scott Moir meme and lots and lots of words. Now that I've gone off the deep end and put this out there for the world to see, it occurs to me that perhaps I should develop some kind of shape for this story. 
> 
> I'll be over here working on that. In the meantime, please enjoy the following:
> 
> \--Chiddy being his adorable self  
> \--Eric Radford giving hugs  
> \--T/S cuddles   
> \--(did I mention the T/S cuddles? Yes?)
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy this little chapter, and thank you ever so for your kind responses!

By the time the game is over dusk is starting to envelop the arena. Patrick blinks, his eyes adjusting to the change in light. He’s been in South Korea for well over a week, but half the time he still feels jetlagged. As wonderful as these Games have been, he misses home. 

Scott and Keegan lag a few paces behind him, arm in arm. They do not technically  _ need _ each other’s support to stay upright, which is good, but Patrick still hopes devoutly that there are not any nosy news camera crews lounging about. The last thing they need is for the two of them to end up on international news featured as roaring drunks.

They make it into the athletes’ village without any kind of incident, unless you want to count the rousing chorus of “O Canada!” that Scott and Keegan decided to belt out as they passed USA House. On the bright side, Patrick is fairly sure that a casual onlooker could just chalk that one up to patriotism and not, y’know, five and a half beers.

By the time they all make it up to the apartments, the two of them are starting to flag. They drop Keegan off on his floor, where he stumbles into his room, bleary-eyed and looking like he wants nothing more than his bed. Eric pokes his head out.

“I hear you’re a national treasure now,” he says drily to Scott, who grins, looking a little pale and wan under the bright colours of his toque.

“National treasure?” he queries, and Patrick realises that he has no idea he’s become an instant meme on social media. He rolls his eyes.

“I’ll explain it to you in the morning,” he says, as patiently as he can. “Come on, you’ve had a busy afternoon. Best get to bed.”

“Got to find T first!” Scott exclaims, a bit too loudly for the quiet hallway. Eric’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Umm...all right then,” he says, giving Patrick a glance. He shrugs.

“He’s had a few,” he says, although he feels like this is probably stating the obvious. “Almost got into a fight with a couple of American assholes, tried to text Tessa on Twitter...it’s been quite an afternoon.”

Eric howls with laughter, slumping against the door as he stares wide-eyed at Scott.

“Dude,” he says, finally catching his breath. “You are taking this whole celebrating thing  _ very _ seriously.”

Scott blinks at him, owlishly.

“We won,” he says, as if this is something that no one has heard yet. “T and me, we won. Twenty fucking years, and we won. And she’s still with me. So...yeah.”

Eric shakes his head, but there’s fondness crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” he says gently. “You two are really good. I’m happy for you.”

Scott reaches over and hauls him into a bear hug.

“Thanks, man,” he says, voice muffled in Eric’s chest. Scott’s three inches taller than Patrick, and so it’s always a little weird to see how much Eric dwarfs them both. “You and Meagan...you’re the best, y’know? The best.”

Eric pats him on the back and shakes his head again.

“I would say go put him in bed, but I don’t think he’ll stay until he sees her,” he says over Scott’s head. “And after that, for God’s sake, get him to go to sleep.”

“Got to see T first,” Scott insists as he releases Eric. “She’s on the fifth floor. Room 512.”

“Not even going to ask how you know that,” Eric mutters, trying not to laugh. “Good luck, Chiddy.”

Patrick rolls his eyes.

“The next time we do this, he’s  _ your _ roommate. Just so we’re clear.”

Eric winks.

“I somehow doubt that,” he says, tone dripping with innuendo, and then waves cheerily. “Have fun!”

Patrick doesn’t even think about it, just shoots up two fingers as he follows Scott down the hallway to the elevators. Eric’s laughter rolls after him.

It is definitely time to go home, he thinks.

* * *

 

He’s a little worried Tessa will already be asleep, or Kaitlyn will be there, but when he knocks on her door, she answers immediately. Her hair is damp, her face scrubbed clean, and she looks very comfortable in her grey lounge pants and little black tank top. She stares at them, eyes flicking back and forth, looking a little worried.

“Are you okay?” she asks, although it’s not quite clear who she means. Scott smiles, that wide, sweet smile that is only reserved for her. He’s always been an outgoing person, laughing, joking, the life of the party, but of all the smiles he has, this one, the quiet one, is hers.

“We lost, T,” he says. “The refs were total shit.”

“I heard,” she says, her mouth quirking up at the corner. “At least you cheered for us both.”

She gestures behind her and pushes the door open wider.

“Come in and sit down for a minute,” she tells Patrick. “I just got out of the shower, so things are a little bit of a mess. Sorry.”

Tessa’s idea of a mess is clearly far removed from the trainwreck going on in the guys’ rooms, but he doesn’t argue, just perches on the end of Kaitlyn’s bed and watches as Scott flings himself onto Tessa’s mattress, arms pillowed behind his head. At the sight of his tennis shoes on her bedspread, her eyebrows go up, and she stares him down until he shamefacedly toes them off and lets them fall to the floor.

“How was practice?” he asks, watching her move around, pottering with bottles of this and that.

“Good!” she says. “We did the choreography for the end number, you know, the one from ‘The Greatest Showman’? It’s easy, I can teach you in no time.”

He grins. “You always learn the choreography for me.”

From his vantage point on the bed, Patrick can see Tessa’s smirk.

“That’s because you always skip out to watch the hockey game,” she points out, quite reasonably. Scott flutters his lashes at her, which is one of his favourite ploys when he suspects she’s miffed with him.

“Couldn’t do it without you, T,” he murmurs in a voice like melted butter, and Patrick glances at the ceiling. He loves them both, really, he does, but there’s only so much he can take.

“You  _ are _ showing up to the next practice, though,” she says firmly, and Scott nods. He looks sleepy and utterly relaxed, sprawled out across the soft cashmere throw on her bed. (Tessa brings her own blankets. Always. It’s one of her particular quirks, Patrick learned long ago, and she will cheerfully pay for an extra checked bag if she has to in order to bring her own pillows and bed linens when they travel.)

“You wanna practice our number tomorrow?” he mumbles, his eyes closed. She glances over at him and sighs.

“Don’t go to sleep yet,” she says, gentle, and he blinks muzzily. “I want to talk to you. And yes, we can practice our number tomorrow. In between interview number 15,000 and 15,001.”

Scott groans.

“Don’t remind me,” he grouses, flopping over and pressing his face into the pillow. “I hate interviews. I hate all interviews. Remind me again why we have to do interviews?”

Tessa reaches over and squeezes his foot.

“Because we’re doing this for our country,” she says in her best pep-talk voice, although her heart is clearly not in it. “Because we owe it to Marie-France and Patch and the team back home. Because if we don’t, we may not eat next year. You know all the reasons why.”

“I know,” he grumbles, and peers up at her through his shock of mussed brown hair. “I know all that. I just - I’m so tired, T. And so are you, even though you won’t say it. I just want - I want the bubble back, you know? Like we had in Seoul. I want that back.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed and runs her hand up and down his calf.

“Me too,” she says softly, and for a minute, Patrick is convinced that neither one of them even remembers that he is there. “I loved that. Room service, all the time at the rink we wanted…”

“That king-sized bed,” he interjects, his voice low and husky. She smiles at him, lets her fingers gently circle his ankle, rub along his arches. After a moment, Patrick coughs, rather awkwardly. Tessa glances up at him in surprise, and then flushes deep pink.

“Umm - I - we should really…” she trails off, clearly searching for a graceful way to deal with the fact that the two of them clearly want to be alone without being rude to her guest. Patrick solves her dilemma by standing up and heading for the door.

“Got to get to bed,” he says, smiling at her broadly. The two of them are no surprise to him, haven’t been for years. The only thing that still surprises him is how shy she is about it. He knows that she fears the media storm, that they fiercely want to protect the relationship they’ve built, but she also knows that their friends, their little skating family, are fully aware and supportive of what’s going on. Feeling the need to reassure her, he pulls her into a hug.

“You two get some sleep, Tess,” he says gently. “It’s been crazy, these last couple of days. And while screaming at the refs at a hockey game may not be your preferred form of relaxation, you still need to unwind.”

He hopes that didn’t sound quite as dirty as he thinks it did, but judging from the fierce blush she has going on, it probably did. He wrinkles his nose, and she laughs.

“I know what you mean,” she says, and he squeezes her a little harder before letting her go. Tessa Virtue is one of his favourite people on the planet, and her sense of humour is one of the primary reasons.

“Thanks for taking care of him,” she says quietly, looking back over her shoulder where Scott is currently curled up around one of her pillows. Patrick smiles.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “He’s done it for me before. He just needed to destress a little, you know? And as long as I kept him off his phone, he was fine.”

She laughs a little, although her eyes are a bit nervous.

“Nothing that’s going to come up tomorrow in front of the cameras, right?” she asks.

“Nah,” he tells her. “I have a feeling that he’ll never have to pay for a beer in Canada again, but that’s about it.”

She giggles, light and loose, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Okay, then. Night, Chiddy,” she says sweetly, and he smiles again. Two of his favourite people, right here.

“Night.”

He’s halfway out the door before he realises that his phone is not in his pocket. He thinks he left it on Kaitlyn’s bed. When he turns to go retrieve it, he stops dead for a moment and just...looks.

She’s curled up in his arms, head nestled on his shoulder, murmuring something to him. Whatever it is, he nods a little, mutters something, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. It’s such a domestic little moment, he thinks, so tender and intimate. The media would kill for something like this, a look at the  _ real _ relationship between the famed Virtue and Moir. The picture worth a thousand words.

He would never. He can’t even imagine betraying either one of them like that, let alone both. But he also thinks that the rest of the world has it all wrong, speculating about what it is they have off the ice, the fairytale romance with its perfect, triumphant ending. They haven’t seen the years of hard work and heartbreak, the years of working through relationships with other people only to finally realise that no one else could ever quite measure up. The years of discipline, the hard years of denial. Patrick hasn’t seen them this openly affectionate in public, this free with each other, ever before. No one picture could capture the years it took to get to this point, where they can cuddle in an anonymous hotel room and shut out the world, where they are finally all right just being  _ them _ . 

Scott’s arm shifts around her waist, pulling her closer to him, and her hand comes up to stroke through his hair. His whole body relaxes into her, as if this is all he’s ever wanted in the entirety of his life, and he buries his face in her neck. She smiles and whispers in his ear.

All told, Patrick decides that he can live for at least a couple of hours without his phone.


	3. Center Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quiet moments at breakfast. Unwittingly hilarious interviews. And a proud moment at the ladies' free. 
> 
> It's a busy day in Pyeongchang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, thank you all so much for your wonderful response to this fic. It is a pleasure to see the amount of great fic that has been put out there in this fandom during the last week or so, and I feel privileged to be a part of that. Your encouragement is a huge factor in that enjoyment. :)
> 
> This chapter started out with fluff, veered into sheer silliness, and then edged into something heartfelt by the end. Really, this chapter is more about the Canadian skating team at this Olympics - still focused around Tessa and Scott, but through the lens of this amazing group dynamic. I loved watching this team at Pyeongchang. They were consistently supportive of each other, whether things were going well or badly. They were open with the media about how much they cared for each other and what it meant to them to get to compete together. For most of them, this was the last Olympics they would ever compete in, so this was a truly special moment to celebrate _together_. 
> 
> I tried to replicate real-life events accurately as best I could recall, but I am sure my timeline is wrong at some point. Since this is fiction, we're just going to roll with it. 
> 
> Finally, I loved all the comments I got about telling this from Chiddy's POV. That was a semi-deliberate choice on my part. I am new to RPF, and was slightly uncomfortable about writing it, so I think this POV is a way to explore the fictional situations I want to without feeling overly intrusive as an author. (No judgement for any other authors, it's just my thing at the moment.) 
> 
> Thanks again for reading - I hope you enjoy, and drop a line to let me know what you think!
> 
> P.S. For anyone who doesn't know/remember, the reference to Joannie in the last section of this chapter refers to Joannie Rochette, the Canadian figure skater who won bronze at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 (Virtue/Moir's first Olympics). She lost her mother days before her first event, and chose to skate anyway in her mother's honour. She is still one of my favourite Olympians ever.

They come down for breakfast fairly late the next morning, a little rumpled and sleepy-eyed. To his credit, Scott does not appear to be hungover, although his voice is undeniably shot. Every time he opens his mouth, Patrick swears it sounds like a cross between a toad and nails scraped over a blackboard. 

At the moment, he’s slumped over a large mug of coffee, Tessa tucked neatly against his side. The cafeteria’s practically empty at this hour, which is no doubt why she doesn’t seem to care that her partner is essentially hugging her like a life-sized and very pretty teddy bear. It’s just the three of them, Patrick lingering over a plate of scrambled eggs and Tessa nursing the last of her freshly-squeezed juice.

“I miss breakfast at home,” she sighs, and Scott’s lips tug upwards. “They’ve been so nice here, but…”

She trails off and nudges her head against his shoulder.

“I think you mean you miss  _ my _ breakfasts at home,” he rasps, and no, the coffee does not seem to be helping his voice. At all. “Your claim to fame is still just poached eggs, remember?”

She looks affronted.

“I can make toast!” she protests. “Patrick, you’ve had my toast before. It’s fine, isn’t it?”

Patrick is not entirely certain that anyone can justifiably be proud of toast-making skills, but he’s willing to play along. (See here: Tessa Virtue, favourite person.)

“It’s delicious,” he says solemnly, and takes a sip of coffee to try to hide the grin that’s threatening to form. “Best toast I’ve ever had. Puts all of Scott’s toast to shame.”

She giggles, that clear, sweet sound that made Canada and then the world fall in love with her in interview after interview. It’s much better off-camera.

“See?” she exults, looking up at Scott triumphantly. “Even Patrick says so. I make  _ excellent _ toast.”

Her partner rolls his eyes, which is immediately ruined by the kiss he presses to her hair.

“Chiddy’s just taking your side because he’s pissed that he had to be the sober one last night,” he says, and coughs. “No fun being sober and responsible.”

Patrick raises an eyebrow.

“At least I’m not the brand-new face of all true Canadian hockey fans,” he observes, and gestures at his phone, sitting on the table between them. “Although apparently I am mildly famous for my side-eye.” He pauses. “I am surprisingly okay with that.”

Tessa grins and nudges Scott in the ribs.

“You’re famous for  _ lots _ of things now,” she says, and the little smirk playing around the corners of her mouth spells out trouble. “Perfect all-around Canadian boy. Maybe I should let you do all the interviews from now on. Put you in flannels and a toque, they’ll eat you up.”

His eyes widen, just a bit.

“You wouldn’t.”

She grins. Evilly. “You skipped out on gala practice. There’s always a price, you know. And don’t we have another interview in what, two hours? I could just send you...all by yourself.”

He groans and drops his head in both hands.

“No….” he begs hoarsely. “Just kill me now. Please. You can put ‘Died of Too Many Interviews’ on my tombstone. It’ll look great next to ‘Sold Out by Tessa Virtue, Partner of Twenty Years.’”

She looks over at Patrick, and they start giggling madly while Scott curls in on himself and mutters things like  _ betrayal  _ and  _ never thought it would come to this _ into his cupped hands.

“They’ll probably make us play one of those stupid games,” she needles him. “Ask you who’s more superstitious and what my favourite colour is.”

Patrick knows he shouldn’t. Really, he does. But sometimes he just can’t  _ resist _ .

“As long as they don’t ask you who likes to sleep in more. Or about your gorgeous green eyes,” he says, very innocently, and then buries his face in his coffee mug. It doesn’t really work, because he can still feel Scott’s eyes boring twin holes through his skull.

“Really, Chiddy?” His voice is cracking with disbelief. “You had to bring  _ that _ up? The  _ sleeping thing? _ She didn’t talk to me for two weeks after that. Two weeks!”

Patrick finally lowers his coffee mug to the sight of Tessa’s cheeks, very pink, and Scott’s furious glare. He smiles, his sweetest, most disarming smile. (He is very, very good at disarming smiles.)

“But it was such a lovely thing to say,” he says, at which Tessa goes even  _ more _ pink and Scott tries to kick him under the table.

“You are  _ not _ funny,” his friend rasps, only his voice is so terrible that the last syllable comes out mostly as a squeak. Patrick and Tessa’s eyes lock across the table, and they burst into ear-splitting laughter at almost exactly the same time.

“Your  _ voice! _ ” she manages between giggles. “Maybe we  _ should _ cancel the damn interview. You’re going to sound like you’re thirteen all over again.”

Scott’s ears turn an alarming shade of scarlet.

“Thanks, T, for reminding me of that,” he says, and downs the remainder of his coffee like it’s personally affronted him. “Nothing like remembering the good old days.”

She smiles at that, cups his face in a rare display of public affection, then runs her thumb over his cheekbone.

“You were cute even then,” she says softly, and Patrick diverts his attention to the little crumbles of egg scattered across his plate. “All outgoing and funny. You always made me laugh.”

When he looks up again, they’re giving each other the Look - that thing they do where they seem to get completely lost in each other, no matter who else is there. On the ice, it’s electrifying. Over breakfast, Patrick decides, it’s just absurd.

“Right!” he says firmly, and they shake themselves out of their Disney moment and have the grace to look a little sheepish. “You have an interview, and I have curling to watch, and Scott has to deny on camera that he was hammered as hell at the game yesterday. It’s a busy morning for everybody.”

Tessa stretches and yawns, wiggling out from under Scott’s arm with long-practiced ease. Slowly, she stands up and braces both hands on his shoulders from behind, rubbing gentle circles into his back.

“Come on,” she says, playing with the ends of his hair. “We just have time for a shower. Can’t be late for interview number 15,345.”

He groans loudly and pulls her closer so he can mutter something in her ear. Patrick isn’t entirely sure, and doesn’t want to be, but it sounds remarkably like  _ only if we’re taking that shower together, babe _ .

For God’s  _ sake _ , he thinks as he voluntarily takes everybody’s dishes to the washing bin.

He really needs to start eating his breakfast alone.

* * *

 

As a friend, he probably should  _ not _ watch Scott and Tessa’s interviews in order to give them hell about it later. However, in his defense, they were the ones who told him when the interview was going to start, and since it’s on Facebook Live, this really does seem to be fair game. Quickly, he pulls up the news outlet’s feed on his phone and hops up from his seat in the stands at the men’s curling match. He cares about his fellow Canadian athletes, he really does, but this is just too damn good to miss.

He brushes past Eric and Meagan, who stare up at him.

“Where are you headed?” she says, sounding a bit surprised. He waffles for a moment, then grins. This is also too damn good to keep to himself.

“Scott and Tess are doing another one of those Facebook Live interview things,” he says, quietly enough so that it won’t carry to the seats around them. “I’ve got it pulled up on my phone. It starts in like - ” he checks his watch “- two minutes. And my signal in here is crap.”

The second he said the words “Facebook Live” Meagan’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh my god, we’re coming with you,” she gushes, grabbing Eric’s arm and tugging him along like a very small steamboat with a much larger cargo ship in tow. “I love those things. He always slips up.  _ Always _ . And while I am far too classy a person to give them shit about it - ”

Eric snorts loudly.

“I am!” she insists as they clamber down the steps and into the dimly lit hallway that runs all the way around the arena. “I would  _ never _ . On the other hand, just randomly slipping stuff he says in interviews into casual conversation...that, I would  _ totally _ do.”

Patrick and Eric snicker, and then they all huddle around Patrick’s phone, volume turned up, and watch as the stream goes live and the interviewer introduces his “very famous guests, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.”

About 30 seconds in, all three of them realise that this is a bloody gold mine. Drunk Scott is entertaining enough in a  _ oh fuck, what is he going to do now  _ way, but sleep-deprived, hoarse, mostly unguarded Scott is so, so much better. In the space of six minutes or less, he manages to tell Tessa that he hates turning his back on her for any reason whatsoever, unwittingly conveys the impression that he is intimately familiar with her routine when she gets ready in the mornings, and defends her nerdiness in the sweetest manner possible. By the time it’s over, the three of them are giggling so hard their ribs ache.

“Jesus,” Eric wheezes, trying to get himself put back together. “I get it. I do. They’re together, they’re in love, but they’re not ready to tell the world, it’s not the right time or place - I’m with it, I really am. But how in the  _ hell _ do they expect anyone to not pick up on the truth when they do shit like this?”

“He’s  _ always _ like this,” Patrick points out, reasonably enough. It’s true. Scott wears his heart on his sleeve, everyone always says, but few of them realise how transparent he really is. It is one of the reasons they’ve been friends for long, trusted each other so much, because Scott can’t lie convincingly to save his life.

Meagan draws in a deep breath, then another, trying to calm herself down.

“Okay, okay,” she manages. “It’s been great. I loved the  _ hell _ out of this. But they’re coming in after this wraps, and they’re going to want the seats we told them we saved, which someone else may have already taken by this time, so…”

She trails off and glances pointedly at the steps. They turn as one and begin trudging back up, all three trying not to start giggling. (If they start that again, they will never, ever stop.)

Patrick’s phone buzzes as they get to the top of their section.

_ \--u have seats 4 us? _   Scott texts.

_ \--Section 12, Row 4 _ , he types back.  _ Did you have a nice interview? _

The emoji Scott sends back is not at all safe for work, or anywhere else, for that matter. Patrick grins. Even without that stupid interview, all of them know damn well that Scott does not remember emojis exist 99% of the time, let alone remember to use them accurately.

_ \--Love you too, Tessa _ , he taps out, and grins.

They come in looking a little windblown, Tessa pushing wisps of flyaway dark hair behind her ears.

“Oh my God, it was windy out there,” she says as they take their seats in the middle of the row. “They made us play this stupid newlywed game where we had to stand with our backs to each other and answers questions out of some quiz for teenage girls on Cosmo, and my hair was flying in my mouth literally the entire time. Ugh.”

Meagan is staring very, very hard at the back of the seat in front of her. She seems to be trembling with some sort of deeply repressed emotion.

“You had to turn your backs to each other?” she says, voice shaking just a little. “That’s just so...ridiculous. Who would like that, having to turn your backs to each other?”

The tremble in her voice hitches into a weird combination between a snort and a giggle, and both of them turn to look at her like she’s suddenly gone crazy.

“Yeah,” Scott says, with a faintly concerned expression. “I mean, it’s not the worst thing we’ve had to do, but still. At least they didn’t ask if we’re doing it backstage or something.”

Eric coughs loudly, and covers his mouth with his hand.

“Wouldn’t want to admit the truth on  _ that _ one,” he mutters to Patrick, who merely closes his eyes and practices his zen breathing techniques. He can’t lose it. Not yet.

“Mmm,” he hums, peacefully. When he’s got it under control, he turns to his best friend. “So, man, tell me something.”

By this time, Scott’s busy watching the curling match, one hand casually rubbing the small of Tessa’s back as she leans forward to talk to Meagan. (Honestly, it’s like neither of them remembers that everyone in the known universe has a camera in their phone and knows how to use it.)

“Yeah, what?” he says distractedly. Patrick fights the urge to cackle.

“What do you think about nerds?” he asks, innocent as a child. “I mean, are nerds the best? Especially the ice-dancing ones? Do they rule the world? I hear they’re the best, but I thought...I thought maybe I should check.”

He knows exactly the minute it hits, because Scott freezes, and the stilling of his hand makes Tessa twist around in her seat to figure out what’s going on. Beside them, Meagan is shaking with silent laughter.

“You know,” Eric says, slow and ponderous, “I just want to know how long it takes you to get ready in the morning. Everybody is now aware that you know how long it takes  _ Tessa _ to get ready, but what about you? Because you moved on a little fast there, and enquiring minds want to know.”

“Yeah, with all that hair to fix? Forget Tessa - what about  _ your _ hair?” Meagan adds gleefully, and Tessa’s mouth falls open. “Btw...that is some damned amazing windswept hair, buddy.”

Scott closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, jaw tensing. Tessa leans back in her seat and puts a hand on his arm; she seems torn between glaring at all of them and collapsing into a smile.

“You watched it,” he says through clenched teeth. They all nod, grinning widely. “You watched it. Just to - ”

“Laugh at you, yes,” Eric supplies. “Out of love, though.”

“So much love,” Meagan chimes in. “Oh, and for the record, dude? You have zero chill. Like,  _ zero _ .”

Tessa has given up the battle by this point and has started to smile - a bit shame-facedly, but it’s still a smile, so Patrick doesn’t feel quite as badly as he would otherwise.

“You are all horrible,” she says, and squeezes Scott’s arm. He is staring straight ahead with a sort of stony expression. “All right, come on, it was a  _ little _ funny.”

Slowly, deliberately, he turns his head and glares at Chiddy and then Meagan and Eric.

“ _ Assholes _ ,” he says in a raspy croak, and his delivery is too funny to resist. As they snicker into their hands, Patrick sees the corner of Scott’s mouth twitch, and he knows it’s going to be okay.

“You know we only mock because we care,” he says helpfully, and does not take it personally when Scott socks him in the arm a little harder than strictly necessary.

He lives for moments like these.

* * *

 

They watch the women’s long program that night as a group, whooping and hollering and clapping until their hands hurt for their girls. Gabby goes out and fights, so hard it hurts him to watch, and then there’s fall after fall. All of them sit there in silence, the muscles in their legs tensing with silent sympathy, wincing every time she hits the ice. They’ve all been there, those moments in front of the entire world when absolutely nothing goes right, and they know the sick agony, the fear that’s running through her head, that screaming din of panic that blocks out everything else in a black rush. 

Patrick looks down at one point, unable to bear the look on Gabby’s face, and notices that Scott’s jacket has been conveniently draped across both his knees and Tessa’s. Behind its concealing folds, their hands are clasped so tightly their knuckles are going white.

When it’s over, finally over, and Gabby is struggling to make her bows while fighting back tears, they surge to their feet  _ en masse _ . They scream for her like she just won the gold, scream and clap and wave to remind her that they’re here, and they love her no matter what, and that this is not the end of her journey. One row below, Scott lifts his hands to his mouth and throws her a kiss, and Tessa smiles at him. They learned something back in Sochi, all of them - that fighting together is vastly preferable to fighting by yourself. That this, too, is family. That not one of them will rise or fall alone.

The scores are brutal, as they knew they would be, and Gabby tries bravely to pull herself together in the kiss and cry, to little avail. Tessa, in a rare unguarded moment, leans her head on Scott’s shoulder and sighs.

“I hate that for her,” she murmurs, and he nods. “She’s got so much talent, and it just...it’s so hard.”

She twists around to look up at Patrick and the others sitting around him.

“We need to go find her tonight,” she says, and Meagan nods emphatically. “If she wants to lick her wounds for a while, fine, but she needs to know that she didn’t let anybody down. That this will be okay.”

Meagan nods fiercely, and Patrick feels a moment of intense pride for their team, and for these two women in particular.  _ The mama bears _ , he thinks fondly (but he decides that perhaps that terminology would be best kept to himself).

The wait for Kaetlyn to skate seems interminable. It doesn’t particularly help that Zagitova goes right before her, the little fifteen-year-old upstart who suddenly seems poised to win gold. Patrick doesn’t particularly care for her style - backloading programs with jump after jump seems the very opposite of the sort of artistry figure skating is supposed to embody. (He thinks his old coach and mentor, Colson, would have been aghast.) But she’s beyond talented, and he is forced to admit that it’s an athletic  _ tour de force _ , cranking out jump after jump as if it’s just another day of practice.

The crowd certainly seems to enjoy it. Although, as they all clap politely at the end of the program, he notices Tessa giving Meagan the side-eye.

“Not my style,” she mouths, and Meagan’s lips purse.

“Mine either,” she mutters, and that’s all there is to that.

And then it’s Kaetlyn, their one hope for a spot on that podium. It’s so much more than that, though, Patrick thinks as she steps out on that ice. He remembers the eighteen-year-old at Sochi with big eyes and bigger dreams, who placed thirteenth and went around with a set face that screamed to the world she wanted more, the combined talents of Kostner and Yuna and Sotnikova be damned. He remembers hearing the news of her broken leg - such an easy accident, one quick swerve to avoid another skater, one edge caught, and then the unthinkable. He remembers the rumours that she was done, that this was all over, remembers sending a get-well card with the rest of them, everyone signing their names and encouraging notes in loopy scrawl. He remembers running into her at various skating events, remembers the fierce determination that blazed out of her to come back, to fight, to the be the best. And here she is, three years later, out there fighting for the bronze. He couldn’t be prouder. 

He looks around at their faces, all of them smiling, hearts pounding, and knows that the pride running through his veins is shared by every damn one of them. He leans down, puts a hand on Scott’s shoulder, and sees his friend’s head tilt. They share a look, one that doesn’t need words, one that says that despite all the shit they love to give each other, this is what matters. This is the second-biggest reason they came back, to watch the torch get passed on. To cheer for the generation coming up behind them, to know that their legacy is resting in safe hands. To know that it’s been worth it, because what’s to come is so strong.

Then the music starts, and he swears that none of them breathes for the next four minutes straight.

She’s perfect. Every jump clean and strong, so strong. There’s nothing delicate about Kaetlyn, nothing fragile or doll-like. She’s a force out on the ice, fierce and powerful, and as she takes command in her shimmering Black Swan costume, she reminds him of electricity and deep-flowing currents and the glide of a sharp prow. She dominates - but she also creates, the artistry shining through in every line, every curve of her blade on the ice, every movement. When she finally glides to a stop and her face breaks into a smile, he can feel the collective whoosh of breath rushing out of every Canadian in the building.

“She did it!” Tessa gasps, grabbing Scott’s arm and completely forgetting about hiding behind the jacket. “Oh my God, she did it. I’m so happy for her.”

Meagan and Eric are beaming from ear to ear, and Keegan is pounding one fist on his knee in exultation.

“Damn  _ straight _ she did it,” Scott says, and he reaches back to bump fists with Patrick. There’s no way to know for sure that it’s enough, and God knows Satoko Miyahara laid down a beautiful program earlier in the night. But deep in his gut, Patrick thinks that there’s no way she’ll hold up to Kaetlyn’s determination, her sheer grit. Even the judges have to see  _ that _ , he thinks.

Kaetlyn sits in the kiss and cry, hugging her coaches and trying to get the jitters of excitement under control. Patrick thinks to himself that the jitters have spread, judging from the way everyone around him is suddenly fidgeting like five-year-olds after a sugar overload.

Finally, finally, the announcer’s voice booms out over the stadium, and there’s a nanosecond of panic before she says in that irritatingly calm, collected voice, “Kaetlyn Osmond has earned in the free skate a score of 152.15. She has a total score of 231.02, and is currently in second place.”

The world erupts around him. They jump to their feet as a group, screaming, as a Canadian woman takes the podium for the second time in eight years. Someone’s waving a flag around like crazy, there are fists flying in the air in triumph, and something in him goes back eight years, to a night on home ice and a girl in a blue dress skating to Saint-Saëns. He remembers a crowd that erupted in a storm of red and white, remembers the tears in his own eyes, remembers the way he and Tessa and Scott hugged each other and waited and fought back the shock and sympathy to cheer for their teammate and her unimaginable courage in the face of loss. He thinks of his friend Joannie, skating for Canada and for her mother, and thinks that he could not be more proud that her bronze legacy has been passed on to this girl, on this night.

Tessa must be feeling something similar, for her hands fly to her mouth, and she gasps, “I’m so proud!” just as Scott forgets all sense of decorum and sweeps her up into a bear hug. She buries her face in his shoulder, just for a moment, and then he lets her down and swings around to slap both hands on Patrick’s chest in unbridled elation.

“She did it!” he yells, and practically jumps up and down with glee. “She  _ did _ it!”

They grin at each other, the adrenaline pounding, and Scott sneaks a kiss at Tessa’s temple as he swings back around. On the monitors, Kaetlyn is beaming, eyes wide as if she’s seeing the world for the first time, and Patrick feels like he’s soaring.

There’s nothing in the world that compares to a night like this.


	4. Second Goal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't _want_ to be stuck here, watching the two of them struggle through what it means to suddenly be the most famous skaters in the world. 
> 
> But Tessa and Scott have a way of disrupting his best-laid plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again...thank you all so much for your feedback and encouragement! At some point, I am going to try to go back through and reply to each one of you. At the moment, though, I am hoping another chapter will suffice. ;)
> 
> So, fair warning. Up until now, this fic has mostly been fluff and giggles, which was exactly what I intended. And then plot bunnies happened, and things got a little angsty. (Don't worry - there's plenty of fluff at the end.) But I couldn't escape the fact that the post-Olympic media storm got insane, and that's got to wear on any relationship. I wanted this chapter to be a glimpse of that struggle and how the two of them choose to handle it.
> 
> I see Tessa as the more private of the two of them. (Honestly, I'm pretty sure the whole world sees that too.) I certainly see her driving the narrative of the two of them sharing a platonic business friendship/partnership. And it became abundantly clear post-win that the media's insistence on focusing on their relationship was beginning to wear on them. Despite the tension of dealing with the media, though, I wanted to show V/M as determined to work through the problem together, in agreement, and still very much as a couple. 
> 
> Perhaps the hardest thing about this chapter was telling it from an outside character's POV. Poor Chiddy ends up being a very awkward third wheel in this conversation, equal parts horrified and fascinated. I personally see Patrick as a very polite and non-intrusive person who would struggle equally with rudely interrupting to leave and rudely staying to listen. Sadly, he has to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea here. 
> 
> Now that you've made it through this long A/N, I hope you enjoy (despite the uptick in angst here). Please drop me a line if you are so inclined and let me know what you think!

They’re up early the next morning.

(Not as early as the godawful mornings of competition - at one point he seriously thought the entire figure skating contingent was going to fall over and die of sheer exhaustion. They are _not_ morning people, as a rule, and having to skate at 10:00 AM is just not _normal_ , NBC’s broadcast schedule be damned.) But there’s gala practice today, and travel plans to be finalised, and so Patrick hauls Scott’s ass out of bed at a much earlier hour than either of them would have preferred. He finds this situation somewhat ironic, because normally Scott is up by 5:00 AM at the latest, but last night got a little...exciting at Canada House. Celebrating a bronze medal finish takes a lot of quality drinking, as it turns out.

They’re sharing a mirror in the narrow, stark bathroom with its too-bright lighting, Patrick shaving and Scott brushing his teeth. It makes him chuckle to think how uncomfortable his teenage self would have been, sharing a bathroom mirror with another man, but it’s Scott and they’ve shared so many hotel rooms by now he’s lost count. For God’s sake, he’s shared hotel rooms with Scott _and_ Tessa on more than one occasion when she got a little tipsy on tour (or fell asleep on Scott’s lap), so any concept of personal space he ever had is pretty much shot to hell at this point. By this time, the two of them have a routine, one that includes an unspoken agreement that no one says a word until both parties have had at least one cup of coffee - Scott because he will chatter Patrick’s ear off first thing if given half the chance, and Patrick because he doesn’t consider himself fully human before his first cup of joe. It works well for them, has for years.

The coffee is burbling away in the cheap little coffeemaker on the countertop of the kitchenette, Patrick’s contemplating whether or not to grow a small goatee, and Scott is humming tunelessly as he brushes. And then, suddenly, the peaceful morning silence is broken by a furious hammering on their door. They jolt and glance at each other, startled, and Patrick moves towards the entryway, towel in hand.

“I got it,” he says, hoping that it’s not anyone important, because his face is still half-covered with shaving cream.

What meets him when he opens the door shocks him into stunned silence.

“Chiddy?” he hears Scott yell through a mouthful of toothpaste. “Who was that?”

Patrick doesn’t feel quite up to answering that question, because _that_ is...Tessa. Tessa Virtue, with flame-red cheeks and breathing that suggests she’s mere seconds away from spiraling into a panic attack. Tessa Virtue, who pushes past him with a hand to his chest that carelessly shoves him out of the way and halfway into the coat closet without even breaking stride.

The only thing Patrick can really think in that particular moment is _oh, shit_.

“Have you _seen_ this?” she spits as she rounds the corner and squares off in the bathroom doorway. Patrick thinks for a moment that her stance is like a fighter’s, feet planted wide, jaw set. She shoves her phone out for Scott to see, and the gesture looks like a body blow.

There’s a moment of still and utter silence, brittle as spring ice.

“Seen what?” Scott asks, and Patrick can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s caught completely unawares. Without even thinking about it, he shifts backwards, out of their way, with the unintentional result that now they’re both in his line of vision.

Tessa’s hands are shaking as she hands him her phone.

“They talked to Sam,” she says. Her voice is shaking almost as badly as her hands. “They interviewed _Sam_. It’s bad enough when it’s just us, trying to fend them off, but now...who’s next? Jordan? Your parents? Your _brothers?_ Where the hell does it end?”

Her voice is spiraling upwards in a desperate sort of panic, and Patrick feels his heart thudding heavily in his chest. He’s not sure if it’s in sympathy or worry or just a deep-seated need to get the hell out of there.

“Let me see,” Scott says softly, and he flicks through the article on the screen with his thumb. “T, look, it’s not that bad. He didn’t say anything - ”

“That’s not the _point!_ ” she snaps, and he flinches. “The point is that they got to him at all! The point is that they will not _fucking_ leave us alone, that every single damn question ends up being about whether or not we’re together, whether or not we’re secretly _married_ , whether the chemistry is _real_ . We just won five Olympic medals, total, and the only thing they want to know is if we’re _screwing each other?!_ For Christ’s sake, is that the only thing anyone can think of anymore? And now they’re going after our choreographer, and who’s next? Our friends, our families, our team members? When does it _stop?_ ”

Her voice breaks on the last words, and she just stands there in the doorway, breathing like she’s run a half-marathon, and God, her eyes are so lost. Scott looks sick, pale and nauseated in the vicious fluorescent light of the bathroom. Slowly, carefully, he sets her phone down next to the sink, draws in a long breath.

“Kiddo,” he says softly, and reaches out to brush his fingers over her shoulder. “Come here.”

He pulls her into his arms, wraps her close and tight, and Patrick recognises exactly what he’s doing a second later. It’s the same thing they do before every competition, that hug that’s gone viral around the world, the one where they synchronize their breathing and get into their headspace and whatever else it is they do when they’re holding onto each other for dear life.

It doesn’t seem to be working right now. The moment spins out, but Tessa’s shoulders shudder convulsively, and then there’s a little choked sound, partly muffled in Scott’s chest. He rubs her back, presses his lips to the part of her hair, all the while looking like someone’s got him on the rack, twisting the life out of him.

“It’ll be okay,” he murmurs, and kisses her temple very gently. “It’ll be all right, baby, it’ll die down, I promise. We just have to hold on a little longer, you know? After we get home, the media will fade away, they always do.”

She makes a noise in her throat and abruptly shoves him away.

“The media?” she laughs, and it’s an ugly sound, something spiky and gnarled. “My God, Scott, if only it _were_ the media. Have you looked at your Twitter account recently? I mean, besides posting about the women’s hockey game? Have you _seen_ what they’re saying about us, the footage they’ve found? They’ve dug up stuff that even I’ve forgotten. And every third thing I’ve been tagged in is asking if we’ve _fucked yet_. Like it’s anyone’s business what we do off the ice. I just - I don’t -"

She breaks off, presses the back of her hand to her mouth like she’s struggling to breathe.

“I know it’s part of the price we pay,” she says, the words strangling themselves in her throat. “I know it’s what we signed up for. But before - in Sochi, in Vancouver - it wasn’t this bad. It was never this bad. And the interviews - the interviews are not helping.”

She looks away, trains her eyes on the floor, and Patrick is consumed with the need to run as far and as fast as he can. He is frozen, though, unable to say a word. He can’t believe he’s still standing here, listening to this - but how in the hell can he interrupt?

Scott swallows hard, scuffs his foot against the bathroom tile.

“I know I fucked up in some of the interviews, Tess, I do,” he says, heavily. “I didn’t mean to. You know that. It’s just - we’re so damn tired, and it’s coming from all sides, and it seems like everything I say comes out wrong.”

She blinks, and something bright and clear splashes on the carpet at her feet.

“I know,” she says in a very small voice. His mouth twists at the sound.

“I don’t - I’m not trying to screw this up, I’m not,” he says, pleading, and reaches for her hand. She takes it, twists her fingers around his, even as another tear falls.

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh, Tessa, don’t cry. For fuck’s sake, don’t cry. Please.”

She sniffs, and her fingers tighten around his.

“It’s not your fault,” she manages. “You just - you’ve always been like this. You just say things, and they’re lovely, in the moment, but everyone twists them around, and - it’s not fair. It’s not fair, that everyone thinks they have a right to _this_.”

His shoulders slump, and he drops her hand. There are fine lines around his mouth, a sharp set to his jaw.

“Always been like this?” he says, and there’s an edge there, fine as the curve of a blade on fresh ice.

“You know what I mean!” she protests, swiping frantically at her face as she looks up at him. She sounds like she’s starting to panic again. “You’ve always been the outspoken one, the one who talks first, the one - ”

“The one who can’t keep it together, you mean?”

There’s another moment of silence, tension singing through the air, and Patrick simply can’t take it anymore.

“I -” he starts, and they both look up at him with such evident surprise that he is completely certain they’ve forgotten he’s there. He swipes at his face, uselessly, because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands and the shaving cream is itching as it dries and he just needs to get _out._ “I should go. I’m sorry, I’ll just - ”

Tessa takes a deep breath, and then another, and slumps against the doorframe.

“No,” she says, and Scott’s eyebrows fly up in surprise. “No, Chiddy, stay. We’re both being idiots, and it’s entirely too early in the morning to have this conversation, and we’re not driving you out of your own room. Stay and knock some sense into us.”

She smiles, this tremulous, sheepish little smile, and Patrick wants to hug her. (He’s never had a sister, but he likes to think that maybe Tessa is pretty close.) He smiles back at her, looks over at Scott, and they have yet another conversation sans words, one in which he asks _are you sure this is okay?_ and Scott shrugs and raises one eyebrow, which is code for _yeah, it’s all good_.

None of which changes the fact that this is damned awkward. Patrick looks at the towel in his hands, at the carpet, and then at his shoes, and finally sits down on the bed for lack of something better to do. He loves them both, he truly does, but he really wishes he’d run when he had the chance. He twists the rough terrycloth between his hands.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tessa says, out of the blue, and both their heads snap up. She looks at Scott steadily, no tears left. “I didn’t mean that it’s your fault.”

He picks at the cuticle on his left thumbnail.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he says quietly. She draws in a long breath.

“It’s you,” she says, simply. “I don’t want to change _you_.”

Patrick thinks that of the two of them, Tessa gets an unfair rap when it comes to saying stupidly romantic things. Truth be told, she’s up there with the best of them.

“You sure about that?” Scott says. It could’ve sounded sarcastic, or cutting, or even cruel, and instead it comes out with a sort of raw uncertainty, as if he’s worried she’s started rethinking this thing between them. Tessa reaches up, skims her fingers along his jawline, presses her thumb against his chin.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m sure.” She pauses, takes a deep breath, and then soldiers on. “This? With us? I want this. I’m sure about that. Very sure. But they - ” she gestures vaguely into space, but he seems to get what she’s talking about, “all those people, the mics in our faces, the cameras - they don’t get to have this. God knows they get everything else, but they don’t get this.”

Patrick picks at a frayed edge at the corner of his towel and thinks that “this” probably does not usually include a very weirded-out best friend.

Scott looks down at her soberly. “So what do we say, then?” he asks. “The same stuff as before? Because that hasn’t really been working all that well.”

Without any warning whatsoever, Patrick finds his mouth moving, not necessarily of his own volition.

“There’s only one way to really put an end to all this,” he says, and then stops dead when he realises he’s talking. He had _absolutely_ no desire to get mixed up in this conversation, and he can’t figure out why the hell he decided to open his mouth. But now they are both staring at him, agape, and he figures he’d best find something useful to say, and fast.

“Care to share?” Scott asks finally. Patrick blinks rapidly, momentarily lost for words, and tries very hard not to open and close his mouth like a landed fish.

“Well,” he says, stalling for time, “you can get up there in front of the cameras and tell them you’re not interested in each other, and never have been. That all the chemistry is just for show on the ice. I mean, no one’s going to be happy about it, but a flat denial will probably get them off your backs. I’m just saying.”

He flicks an apologetic glance at Scott, whose entire face now looks like it’s been carved out of granite. _God_ ... _what the hell did I just do?_ he thinks to himself. Deep down, he’s known all along that, of the two of them, Scott was the one who would be fine with coming out to the world about what was really going on...just like, deep down, he knew that this was really Tessa’s plan, that she was the one who insisted on keeping their relationship under wraps. He just hadn’t realised, until this very moment, that Scott was convinced she wanted the ruse because she wasn’t going to stick around, because she didn’t really want him the way he wanted her.

Scott’s throat ripples as he swallows, hard. “Is that what you want, T?” he asks, his eyes trained on his hands. His voice is very careful, very guarded, as if he’s afraid that if he lets any of the carefully restrained emotion out he’ll fall apart, right there on the ugly carpeted floor. He refuses to look at her.

Tessa stares at him. Patrick thinks that for a woman who is renowned for being continually poised and polished, everything is showing on her face all at once right now, the love and the fear and the desire to _run_ , just go and leave everything but him behind.

“No,” she whispers, and neither of them misses the way Scott’s shoulders relax at the word. “No. I’m not going to lie. Not about this. We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing - talk about the business partnership and the skating and how it’s all part of the art and how flattered we are that people read into it. We can do that. But I’m not going to lie. Not about you. Not about us.”

He reaches for her, cups his hands around her face and draws her to him until his forehead rests against hers. His fingers shake against her skin.

“Thank God,” he breathes. She half-laughs, a strange, choked little noise, and he smiles a little, lifts one hand to her cheek to smooth away any stray tears.

“You have the worst ideas, Chiddy,” he says, but it’s more teasing than anything, and Patrick lets out a slow breath. God, but the two of them are like a roller coaster this morning. Still, the way they’re looking at each other right now, the way she leans into him, his hands tangling in her hair - all of it seems to be a good sign. (Patrick still thinks he should have run when he had the chance, but too late for that now.)

“You know, I can’t help the fact that you two went viral for basically having sex on the ice,” he deadpans, hoping to lighten the mood, and Tessa actually snorts.

“We do _not_ have sex on the ice,” she says primly, turning to face him, and Scott chuckles as he hugs her from behind. If he holds her a little tighter than usual, buries his face in her neck a little longer than he normally does, no one seems to feel the need to mention it.

“I would just like to point out that your signature lift in ‘Moulin Rouge’ is now referred to as ‘cunniliftus,’” Patrick says, and then bites his lip. This may be a bridge too far, and he regrets it as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

Luckily for him, it does the trick.

“It’s called _what?!_ ” Tessa gasps, and Scott starts laughing so hard it shakes his body and hers. Patrick lets himself grin, finally.

“It even showed up on a porn website,” he says, in the tone of someone presenting a class report. “I heard. I would not know anything about this firsthand, of course.”

Tessa’s hands fly to her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she whispers. She looks aghast, but she doesn’t seem to be spinning back into a panic over the world’s continued interest in their romantic relationship, so he decides to count this one as a win. “Seriously?!”

“Chiddy, Chiddy,” Scott says gravely, shaking his head. “I don’t know what’s more disappointing - you looking at porn during the Olympics or the two of us showing up on an X-rated website in the first place.”

Tessa giggles, and Scott’s face brightens perceptibly. His hands gentle on her waist, he spins her around until they’re face to face.

“Leaving aside the question of what Chiddy’s been doing with his spare time,” he begins (Patrick cheerfully shoots him the bird in response), “are we good? Are we okay?”

She nods, and his hands come up to her shoulders, thumbs rubbing circles over the soft fabric of her jacket.

“Yeah, we’re good,” she murmurs. “I just - I saw that interview with Sam and just lost it a little, you know? It all came crashing in. I’m sorry.”

He smiles, presses a kiss to her nose.

“It’s okay,” he reassures her, then gives her a shit-eating grin. “I like having angry women barge into my apartment at 6:30 in the morning. Gets my adrenaline going.”

She chuckles half-heartedly.

“I shouldn’t have blamed you. Or sounded like I was blaming you,” she says, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. “I didn’t mean it.”

Patrick has to hold in a snicker, because the second she looks up at him, big green eyes solemn and apologetic, Scott just _melts_.

“Kiddo,” he mutters, voice suddenly scratchy. “It’s fine. I’m good. We’re good.” He brushes a strand of hair away from her face and smiles. “And I swear that tonight I won’t say anything stupid. Cross my heart.”

Her face goes three shades paler than normal.

“Tonight?!” she hisses, and the whites of her eyes flare. “Oh God, I forgot. I completely forgot. We’re on NBC tonight, with Scott Hamilton and Tanith, and oh _God_ , you can’t say anything about my sleeping habits or green eyes or _anything_. I will _kill_ you, Scott Moir, I swear to God I will.”

Patrick knows it’s terrible. She’s his friend, and he loves her (in a strictly platonic way - _actually_ platonic, not the bullshit the two of them like to sell the public), but Tessa Virtue flying into a genuine tailspin is one of the funniest things on the planet. He can’t help but silently laugh.

Scott stares at her in bewilderment.

“I just said I wouldn’t say anything stupid, T,” he points out in what he seems to think is a very reasonable tone of voice. “It’ll be fine.”

She ignores him.

“Oh Jesus, they’re going to ask us about it, I know they will, and we need to sit down and _rehearse_ something to say this time. I’m going to write it down, and you’re going to memorize it. I’ve got to write it down. Don’t you have one of those little pads of paper or something, like they have in hotel rooms?”

Patrick isn’t even trying to be quiet anymore, and she looks over at him like he’s trying to strangle a puppy or something.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she snaps. Which just sets him off even more, because she reminds him so vividly of a kitten with all its claws straight out.

“Do you really _have_ to script your responses at this point?” he manages when he can breathe again. “I mean, after twenty years of this, don’t you have it down pat by now?”

She does not look amused.

“When we’re going on NBC and giving an interview in front of the entire United States, then yes, we do need to script a response,” she huffs. “We are going to lay this to bed once and for all, tonight, on primetime. _What?!_ ”

He absolutely loses it, doubles over as wave after wave of unrestrained mirth shakes him from head to toe. Somewhere over his head he can hear Scott’s bark of laughter, followed by a sharp _Ow!_ as Tessa does something in retaliation. (Patrick’s betting an elbow to the ribs.)

“What is so damn funny?” she enquires, and Patrick can see the toes of her neat little running shoes in his peripheral vision. When he finally straightens up and manages to focus again, she’s standing in front of him, hands on her hips, staring him down.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I really am. But you said - you said, ‘Lay this to bed,’ and I - ”

He breaks off as he almost loses it again, and instead bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. He really doesn’t want to end his young life here in Pyeongchang at the hands of one of his best friends. (Honestly, though, the people who say that Tessa Virtue never loses her temper have yet to experience one of her death glares. They’re spectacular.)

“Hilarious,” she says icily, and then turns to fix her eyes on Scott, who is trying to muffle his laughter in his sleeve and failing horribly.

“Both of you are such _boys_ ,” she says, and at their matching grins she rolls her eyes and steps back over to Scott. “Honestly. I don’t know why anyone bothers with either one of you.”

“That hurts, T,” Scott says dramatically, one hand over his heart. “What, you just love me for the skating now?”

She narrows her eyes and draws herself up to her full height.

“You are coming to my room in exactly twenty minutes,” she says precisely, every word perfectly articulated. “We are going to sit down, we are going to go over every _possible_ question NBC could ask us, and we are going to make _sure_ that we are picture-perfect on every response. Okay?”

He shrugs and nods.

“All right, if it’ll make things easier tonight, sure,” he says. “We can practice. I mean,” his voice dips into a husky purr, “there’s other things we can practice too…”

He trails off and waggles his eyebrows. Patrick groans.

“Dude. It’s bad enough that I have to sit though you two arguing. I don’t need to know about what you’re ‘practicing’ together. Really.”

Tessa is giving both of them a scandalised look, which just makes Scott grin.

“I was talking about our exhibition skate,” he says, looking very innocent. “You two are _extremely_ dirty-minded.”

She jabs him in the ribs again and looks vindictively pleased when he grunts and rubs the spot aggrievedly.

“My room, twenty minutes,” she snaps. “And _no screwing around_.”

She ignores Patrick’s second groan, just turns on her heel and heads for the door. Halfway there, though, she turns around, marches back, and wraps both arms around him, laying her cheek against his head. When she pulls away, she looks down at him and tousles his hair, giving him a half-embarrassed, half-fond smile.

“Thank you,” she murmurs for the second time in three days, and then she’s gone, leaving the scent of vanilla and lavender and a lovelorn look in his roommate’s eyes.

“You know, you are very, very lucky that I was your roommate this time around,” Patrick points out as he gets up to wash off the mostly-dried shaving cream that is still adhering to his neck. “ _Very_ lucky.”

Scott grins ruefully and rubs the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” he admits, and their eyes meet in the mirror. “I know. Sorry about…” He waves a hand around.

Patrick shrugs and rinses off his razor. He is beginning to think a beard would look downright impressive.

“It’s all good,” he says, and puts the cap on the shaving cream. “You can owe me.”

Scott laughs and chucks his toothbrush in the general direction of his bag.

“Whatever you want, man. Whatever you want.”

Patrick thinks back over the hellishly awkward half-hour that has, so far, defined his morning, and thinks there is not enough money in the world.

“You’re buying drinks on tour in Japan, then,” he decides. “ _All_ the drinks.”

Scott raises an eyebrow and reaches for his socks.

“Sure,” he says. “If Tessa doesn’t kill me first.”

Patrick is not sure that this is going to work out in his favour.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're just here for the story, feel free to skip. If you're an ardent shipper who likes knowing the whys and wherefores, read on.
> 
> I mostly based the conversation between Scott and Tessa on watching their interviews in the week or so after their win. There's a distinct difference between the way they interacted in the more casual interviews (for instance, the Facebook Live interview I referenced in the last chapter) and the way they interacted during interviews with news channels - for example, NBC's "On Olympic Ice." Even though I'm sure a big part of that difference is due to the format and the audience, I still think there was some kind of decision on their parts towards the end of the week to reclaim the narrative of Platonic Business Partners. This chapter is just a glimpse at one way that conversation could have gone. 
> 
> I also have postulated in this chapter that neither of them is very aware of the storm of attention on social media. This is verified by one of their interviews, in which they said that they really hadn't paid attention to what was going on for several days and had simply been enjoying the Olympics. Their choreographer, Sam Chouinard, was in fact interviewed by a Canadian radio station. In my headcanon, this would be a bridge too far for Tessa especially, given how carefully she guards their privacy. Sam didn't out them to the media, but he certainly hinted that he was in favour of a relationship between them. 
> 
> I am also aware of the irony of writing a chapter of RPF about how hard media scrutiny must have been for them. We all ship them, clearly. I know I follow ardent shippers on Tumblr and Twitter, and I absolutely _love_ sharing V/M content and feels with them. But one of the things I respect most about the people I follow and chat with is that they have clear boundaries - shipping is okay, hounding V/M is not. They are real people, with real lives, and they very well may not live out our shipper fantasies. Tessa's reaction to social media in this chapter is mostly directed towards users who _were_ hounding the two of them. I just wanted to make that clear for any readers who felt at all offended by that line.
> 
> Again...thanks for reading! Hope it's been a fun ride so far.


	5. Assist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick honestly doesn't know what's gotten into him. Or how to fix it. 
> 
> But he sure as hell knows he has to try. 
> 
> (otherwise known as the one in which Scott has a crisis of faith)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, 'round about Chapter 2 of this fic, I had a Plan. It was a good Plan. I had it all mapped out and everything. And the Plan was rocking along very nicely until this chapter, when it grew teeth and fangs and ran around destroying everything. 
> 
> This beast of a chapter is what resulted. It was not at all what I intended, if we're being perfectly honest. It went in five different directions at once and then had to be forcibly reigned in. It even involves an unplanned flashback, if that gives you an idea of how violently this thing went off the rails. But it's written, and it's here, and I'm hoping you enjoy it nevertheless. 
> 
> I'm giving all the shippery notes down at the bottom, but just two quick things here: first, thank you all _so very much_ for your wonderful reaction to this fic. There is so much amazing V/M fic coming along every day, and I am so pleased to be a part of it. I look at the talented writers in this fandom and am simply in awe. 
> 
> Second, Tessa makes some decisions in this chapter that may seem a little...odd at first blush. Give her a chance. You're going to see her side in the next chapter, promise. 
> 
> All right - hope you have such fun reading this, and let me know what you think!

He decides to go to gala practice the next morning just for the hell of it. Four years ago, he’d been _in_ it - the silver medallist, almost the champion, the favourite for gold until Yuzuru Hanyu blazed across Olympic ice like a meteor through the night sky. He can’t help but feel a tug in the pit of his stomach as he remembers, but he tamps it down as he walks up to the arena, pulls open the door and lets the cool darkness of the hallway envelop him.

He’s made his peace with Sochi, along with most of the Canadian team, if they’re being honest. These Games have been about redemption for so many of them - Scott and Tessa, Meagan and Eric, Kaetlyn, all of them have proven on the biggest stage in the world that they deserve their spot on the podium. But he made a choice when he decided to come back, a choice to do it not for the gold this time, but for himself. A choice to make a statement, to stake his claim to something bigger than a place on those three coveted circles. He’s well aware that over half the figure skating world thinks he’s an anachronism now, an ironic victim of a fate that he created for himself when he landed that first quad years ago. They see him as vaguely pitiable, he knows, a dinosaur who refused to quietly accept his fate and lumber sadly away into his well-deserved retirement.

He doesn’t see it that way at all. For him, it’s about stepping out on Olympic ice for the last time to create something - an unparalleled artistry, a connection to the music and the moment and the crowd that shimmers like invisible fire. He wanted to prove to the world even in the era of the quad, when jump after jump and little more can put you in contention for the top, that there is still beauty in the deep curve of a blade, in the bend of a knee and the sweep of sharp metal on ice. Beauty in a note soaring, in that hushed moment when the arena goes silent and there’s nothing in the world but the unutterable mystery of one human being creating magic out there alone on the greatest stage. He’s been there - he’s felt that, he’s made an audience of millions feel that, and it’s enough. He’s happy for Yuzuru and Shoma and Javi; he feels no bitterness, can look at their faces on the podium and rejoice with them in their triumph. They are artists too, and he’s proud that in some way, he’s passed his legacy on to them. He did what he came here to do, and it’s enough. It will always be enough.

He climbs the stairs with his hands in his pockets, shivers involuntarily at the brush of chilly air as he comes out at the top and glances about the place. He just wants to look around for a minute, savour these last few hours of his last Olympic Games. Unbidden, a line from something, some musical, runs through his head: _Look around, look around - how lucky we are to be alive right now_ , and he grins as he rocks back and forth on his feet and takes in the empty seats. He is so damn lucky, he thinks, so much luckier than he realised as a 23-year-old walking away from Sochi with the silver, so much luckier than he realised as a 19-year-old walking away from Vancouver in fifth place. He _knows_ now, knows what he wants and what he values most, knows who he is on the ice and off. Let the world see him as a remnant from a earlier era, a throwback to a gentler, more gracious time, like some ancient Victorian who accidentally got placed in the wrong century. He knows the truth, and that’s all he has to know.

He’s so lost in his own head that he doesn’t notice the dark figure hunched in the seats two rows above until he hears a hoarse cough and turns to see Scott staring down at him.

“Hey,” he says when it becomes apparent that Scott has no intention of saying anything. “You’re here early.”

This is worth commenting on. Scott’s a hell of a lot better than he used to be, but that’s just with being on time. Not even Tessa can get him to be early for anything.

Scott just shrugs and looks down at his sleeve, picking at the fabric morosely. He looks...miserable, Patrick decides. Utterly miserable. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his Team Canada jacket and clambers up the two rows of steps, drops into the seat beside Scott, and cocks his head expectantly.

“What’s up with you?” he asks after the brooding silence stretches on for another minute. Fuck, he thinks, if it’s another stupid interview that’s got Scott this wound up, he’s going to storm out there and demand the press pass of every reporter who dares even breathe the words “Virtue and Moir.” There has to be a limit _somewhere_.

Scott sighs heavily and kicks lightly at the back of the seat in front of him.

“Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do when this is all over?” he asks. His voice is still raspy, scratchy from his cold (and all the screaming at the hockey match), but he sounds a little better today. Patrick mulls over the question for a moment and shrugs.

“Yeah, of course,” he says, because it’s true. He’s thought about it. He’s thought about it a lot. He thinks maybe he wants to get involved in the business side of skating, put his economics degree to some kind of use. He knows for a fact he wants to tour for a while. He wants to stay in the world he’s used to, the world he loves, but in what capacity he’s not sure. The one thing he _is_ sure of is that he wants to enjoy these last few moments in Pyeongchang, in what is undoubtedly his last Olympics. He does _not_ want to sit around mulling over what he wants to do with his life next. Not right now, anyway.

Scott kicks the seat back again, his mouth set in a grim line.

“Me too,” he says, but it sounds like a death sentence, bit out between his teeth. Patrick frowns; something is wrong, something more than the normal existential crisis Olympic athletes inevitably go through as the end of their competitive careers draws near. Something is...off.

“What are you thinking you want to do?” he asks gently, because when Scott gets like this, broody and glum and introspective, he’s a bit like a pissed-off clam. Push him, and he’ll slam shut (or, equally likely, slam something into small broken pieces). Coax him slowly, and he’ll open up if you give him enough time.

“I dunno,” he says, and starts worrying the cuff of his jacket between his fingers. “I’ve thought about coaching. I’m not bad at it. I could go home, go back to Ilderton, work at the rink and the skate shop. It wouldn’t be a bad life, you know.”

He sounds desperately like he’s trying to convince himself, and while Patrick agrees that it wouldn’t be a bad life, not at all, he doesn’t think Scott believes that for a hot minute.

“So you’re definitely retiring, then? You and Tessa?” he asks, and his eyes never leave Scott’s face as the words are said. (When the occasion calls for it, let it be known that Patrick Lewis Wai-Kuan Chan can be crafty as a motherfucking fox.)

He was right. He was so very right, because the second the word “Tessa” left his mouth, Scott flinched like he’d been stung. So _that’s_ what this is about. Tessa.

Scott shifts uncomfortably in his seat, eyes fixed on the ground between his feet.

“We, umm...we haven’t decided yet. Officially.”

Patrick rolls his eyes.

“I’m not an interviewer,” he points out drily. “There’s no camera in your face. What are you _thinking_ you’re going to do?”

Scott’s mouth twists. “We agreed that this was a pretty damn good way to go out. We said we’d wait till everything dies down, till we get home and get some perspective, but...I don’t think we’re coming back. It’s time, you know?”

Patrick nods, because he does know - knows in his bones that this is the right time for all three of them, and he can see the certainty in his friend’s face too. But while he himself has a sense of peace about this, a feeling of rightness and things coming full circle, the way Scott is viciously tugging at a thread on his jacket sleeve seems to convey just the opposite.

It’s a risky move, he knows, but he thinks it’s worth prying the clamshell open just a little farther.

“So...what’s Tessa planning to do after you two are done?”

It was a brutal way to phrase it, and he feels a slight twinge of guilt; then he sees the look on Scott’s face and the feeling of remorse intensifies sharply. Tessa’s said for years that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and she’s not wrong. Patrick can see everything laid out plain as bold print - the fear, the loneliness, the sense of not being ready, not being prepared, the mute misery of expected loss. Without thinking, he reaches out and puts a hand on Scott’s shoulder, offers the comfort of company without words.

There’s a long pause, too long, and Scott’s voice is cracking when he answers.

“I don’t know.”

Patrick’s hand drops in surprise. Four years ago, after the travesty that was Sochi, he wouldn’t have been nearly as surprised by the idea of the two of them not discussing what would happen after they retired from competition. But now, with the two of them together in every way he can think of, all he can wonder is _what the hell?_ Surely, _surely_ they’ve talked about this. How could they not?

Something of his surprise must show on his face, because Scott huffs out a humourless laugh and runs his thumb up and down the arm of his seat in a repetitive motion.

“We agreed we wouldn’t talk about it until after the Olympics,” he explains, in a tone that suggests this was the stupidest idea he’s ever heard, bar none. “T said that we’d focus better, keep our heads in the game, if we didn’t let ourselves think past the Olympics. The B2Ten mental coaches thought it was insane, but...here we are.”

It’s very rare for Scott to have anything even mildly negative to say about his partner, and the bitterness in his voice is nearly unprecedented. Even in their worst fights, they’re always loyal to each other, down to a fault. At the moment, Patrick can barely keep from goggling at the resigned fury evident in how he talks about this plan that Tessa has apparently cooked up.

“Well...you okay with that?” he says before he can talk himself out of it.

Scott huffs out a sharp breath and leans forward, hands twisting around each other. It’s one of his oldest tells, and one that Patrick’s only seen a handful of times. Scott’s given to big movements, dramatic ones at times, but he almost never wrings his hands together; it’s a small, anxious gesture utterly foreign to him, and the fact that he’s doing it now means he’s far more upset than he’s letting on.

“I don’t - I don’t know why she won’t talk about it,” he grits out, and his breathing is getting choppy. Part of it’s the cold, and part of it is...something else. “It’s like there’s this wall, you know? Like we had to get here, and win, and then - I don’t know what. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I always know what she’s thinking.”

Patrick nods in quiet sympathy. He’s envied their partnership at times, envied that certainty that no matter what happens out there on the ice there’s someone to share it with you. But in this particular moment, looking at his best friend twisted up in knots, he’s suddenly very glad he’s skated singles his entire life.

“Why do you think she won’t bring it up?” he asks, and hopes that the tone is coming out as concerned rather than curious. The last thing he wants is for Scott to think he’s prying.

“Fuck if I know,” Scott says, and abandons twisting his hands together in favour of clenching them on his knees, hard enough that the knuckles go white. “I mean, I think I know. I can figure most of it out. She’s fucking brilliant, and she already has all this stuff in the works - the fashion stuff, and the designing, and all of it. She has a plan. She always has a plan. I just - ”

He stops abruptly, and Patrick reads between the lines and feels something tighten in his chest. _Oh, Jesus_ , he thinks. _She has a plan, and you figure you’re not in it_. Never mind that this is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, because he can’t see Tessa abandoning her partner in anyone’s wildest dreams, but the thing is, _Scott_ believes it, and that’s what is so horribly wrong here.

“You think she’s going to move on,” he says finally, because he’s not going to make his friend say it. Not out loud.

There’s a brief silence, and then a sort of strangled noise that comes from Scott’s throat that he tries (and fails) to disguise as a cough. In an effort to break the awkwardness of the moment, Patrick fumbles around in his pocket and produces a slightly lint-covered cough drop.

“Here,” he says, and fuck if he isn’t turning into somebody’s mom, but at least it’s better than just sitting there and letting the moment sink in while Scott manages to convince himself that Tessa’s leaving him in the dust.

“Thanks, man,” Scott says, and proceeds to morosely consume the cough drop while giving the rink a baleful stare. The silence spins out again, as it has all morning, and Patrick draws in a deep breath, then another.

“Look,” he says suddenly, and Scott jolts in his seat just a bit. “It’s not my business. I know that. But I can’t see her just picking up her life and moving on. For one thing, we have tour in a month or so.”

The corner of Scott’s mouth ticks up in a tiny gesture that screams irritation.

“Tour,” he grunts, and then coughs for real this time. “Yeah, we’ll have tour for a while. But tour doesn’t last forever. Then what?”

There’s really a very simple answer to this. Thinking of it, Patrick raises both eyebrows and mentally curses whatever gods exist. He may be a nice guy, a downright sensitive guy according to his friends and close acquaintances, but that does _not_ mean he wants to discuss his best friend’s relationship status like he’s twelve years old at a damned cafeteria table. He wishes for the thousandth time that the two of them would just get their shit together and talk like normal human beings do.

“This may seem a little obvious,” he says, trying to keep the sarcasm to a bare minimum, “but last I checked, you two were together. Like off-ice, dating, hiding your romantic nonsense from the world _together_. Which means that, no matter what happens with the skating, neither of you is leaving the other. Or did I get something wrong here?”

Scott’s eyes narrow.

“You didn’t get it wrong,” he bites out. “But we agreed to not talk about after the Olympics. For anything - competition, us together, anything. We haven’t talked about what happens...with us. After.”

Patrick swears he feels his jaw drop.

“ _What?_ ” he exclaims, and Scott’s jaw knots so tight he’s worried about his friend’s molars being ground to fine powder.

“Yeah,” and Christ, but he sounds wrecked. “She wanted it that way. I told you that. And now...now I’m starting to wonder why.”

Jesus fucking _Christ_. They’ve been together for a year and a half now, and the entire time, there’s been a moratorium on what happens after these Games. And Scott - Scott thinks it’s because she wants to leave him, that the second they’re done with the last interview she’ll be packing her bags for some glamorous new life far away. No wonder he’s a mess.

Patrick wracks his brain for something, _anything_ , to say. He can’t blame Tessa, because he knows her, and he knows she wasn’t anticipating anything like this when she came up with the idea. She forgets sometimes that Scott has insecurities too, especially when it comes to her, things he won’t bring up with a mental prep coach or a counselor because they run too deep for him to be able to say in front of almost anyone at all. Quite frankly, Patrick’s beyond shocked that they’re talking about it now, because the only other time Scott’s ever admitted to doubting that Tessa loves him was when he was so drunk he could barely stand.

That’s when it hits him. Shit. Oh, _shit_. This is Japan all over again, only there’s no alcohol involved and it’s still going to hurt like fuck.

* * *

 

He remembers it like it’s yesterday. It was a night about two months ago, at the Grand Prix Finals in Nagoya, hauling Scott’s ass home from an evening that involved far too much vodka in far too many forms. (Why vodka in Japan was anyone’s guess, but it was Scott’s preferred choice in the absence of any decent kind of whisky.) The two of them had come in second, their teeth gritted at the taste of silver in their mouths and the sight of the French atop the podium, almost two whole points ahead by the end of the day. Tessa comes out of the post-skate round of interviews with a set smile and stony eyes, and then brushes everyone off to go back to the room she’s sharing with Meagan.

They head back to the hotel in silence, just the three of them, and when Scott reaches for her hand in the privacy of the hotel hallway, she bats it away.

“I just need to be alone for a while,” she says, not unkindly, but his face still looks like she’d slapped him full force.

“Come on, we’ll go out and drown our sorrows,” Patrick offers - anything to break the awkwardness of the desperate silence that has abruptly descended on them, and she nods in undisguised relief.

“Yeah,” she chirps, too cheerfully, “go out and have fun with Patrick. I’m just going to take a bath and go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

Scott turns without a word and stalks off towards the elevators. Patrick looks at Tessa, who seems torn between looking slightly guilty and fiercely stubborn.

“I’ll take care of him,” he offers, and she presses her lips together.

“Okay,” she says. “Don’t let him do anything stupid. He’s mad about the silver, and mad at me - ”

“He’s mostly mad at himself,” Patrick points out, and her eyes flash in surprise, then slide slowly to the floor.

“Yeah,” she whispers, and her face nearly crumples. “Just...I need a little time to process. It’ll be okay tomorrow. It’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Right,” he says, because it most likely will be, and even if it isn’t, there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. “Get some rest. See you in the morning.”

She nods, looking like she’s about to cry, and vanishes into her room. When he catches up to Scott, he’s glaring at the down button on the elevator like it’s personally offended him, and Patrick sighs. It’s going to be a long night.

All of which results in the two of them stumbling back to the hotel at 3:30 in the morning, Scott plastered against his side, mumbling in broken sentences that only make sense about twenty-five percent of the time.

“Don’t know what she sees in me,” he mutters, slumped against Patrick’s side as he fights to wrestle the key card out of his wallet and get them both inside. The night air is fucking _cold_.

“Me either,” Patrick snaps as Scott’s weight threatens to dislocate his left shoulder. “Would you _move?_ I can’t reach my wallet like this.”

Scott obligingly shifts over until he’s slumped against the wall next to the door instead.

“So smart,” he says, low and garbled. “So fucking smart, and so beautiful. She’s so damn beautiful, Chiddy, you know?”

He slides the key card in and prays fiercely that the light on the damned reader will turn green. It does not.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he says, irritation bleeding into the edges of his voice. “If I say yes, you’re going to deck me. If I say no, you’re going to deck me. There are no good choices here.”

Scott chuckles, loose and easy.

“Not gonna deck you. Not worried,” he says, head lolling back lazily against the bricks. “You’re a good friend, Chiddy. And she wouldn’t...wouldn’t cheat. Not in her.”

Patrick agrees wholesale with that statement, and, thank fuck, the key card finally works.

“Yep, you picked a good one,” he says briskly, and tugs at Scott’s arm. “Come on, up and at ’em, Moir. Time to get to bed.”

Scott follows obediently into the dark little entryway, stares at the staircase with a very serious face.

“Smart and...and beautiful,” he says unexpectedly as he wavers towards the first step and then stops, holding onto the banister tightly. “She...didn’t screw up today. I screwed up. Cost us the gold, Chiddy. I cost us the gold.”

It’s the same thing he’s been saying all night, but this is the first time he’s brought Tessa into it. Patrick stops dead and looks at him, gauges the level of heartbreak in his eyes.

“That’s not why she went to bed early,” he says, answering a statement that hasn’t even been made. “Quit thinking like that. She’s tired and pissed, but it’s not at you. Or not _just_ at you.”

Scott shakes his head, which seems to make him dizzy, because he sinks down to sit on the third step with a groan, skull cradled between his hands.

“She’s better,” he says, the words muffled by his arms around his head. “Better than me. Always has been. Best skater...best skater I’ve ever seen. Ever known. Could’ve skated with fucking anybody.”

Glancing at his watch, Patrick realises that there will be no getting to bed for either of them until this is out. Because he cares about Scott, and because he knows from experience that getting him up the stairs quietly will not happen without his voluntary cooperation, he sinks down on the step next to him and wraps both arms around his knees.

“If she wanted to skate with someone else, she would’ve,” he points out, which is absolutely true. In all the years he’s known Tessa Virtue, she’s never done a damn thing that she didn’t want to do (and then have planned out to the nth degree).  

Scott lifts his head from his knees to stare blankly at the grid of the tile, mapped out in slivers of moonlight at their feet.

“I was an idiot,” he says, the words thick on his tongue. “For years. Dated all those girls...none of them came close. Not even close.”

 _I know that_ is what Patrick wants to say. _I know that, because every single damn one of them had something about them that reminded you of Tessa_. He doesn’t, though, just sits there and stares at the tiles and lets his friend talk.

“She could’ve left,” Scott says with freakish calm. “Could’ve picked someone else. Could’ve stayed...we could’ve stayed retired. After Sochi. Fucking Sochi.”

Patrick smiles a little. They all carry some baggage from Sochi, it seems.

“But she didn’t,” he says mildly. Scott raises an eyebrow.

“No. She didn’t,” he says, and stretches his legs out in front of him, flexes his feet. “Stayed with me. Came back to me.”

“And you came back - ”

“ - for her,” Scott interrupts. “Came back for her. To skate with her. Just her.”

Patrick is glad he’s sitting down, because even though they’re close, the three of them, this is something he didn’t know. He figured they came back for a number of reasons - to erase the taste of Sochi from their mouths, to go for the gold one last time, to cement their status as legends, to enjoy the competition together. He did _not_ figure that one-half of their iconic duo came back solely because he was head-over-heels in love with the other half.

Although, come to think of it, he really shouldn’t be surprised.

“And it seems to have worked out for both of you,” he says when he can get his head on straight again. (After all, he’s had some vodka tonight too.) “It’s going great.”

“Yeah,” Scott sighs and leans back on his elbows. “It’s fucking amazing. She’s amazing. Just waitin’...waitin’ for the day she wakes up and realises she could do better.”

Patrick fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Why the hell are you thinking like _that?_ ” he asks. Scott chuckles.

“Because it’s true,” he says, with the simple logic of the very drunk. “She could. Could have any guy she wanted, y’know. She never...never realises. Never sees how they look when she walks in the room. Always...always bugged the hell out of me.”

Patrick doesn’t have a good answer for this, because quite frankly it’s always bugged him too (although for drastically different reasons). He remembers when she was launching her fashion line, remembers going to high-powered dinners with her, standing at her elbow watching as guy after guy hit on her. Some of them were nice enough, some of them were a little too pushy, and one or two were downright creepy. He worked out a system with her after a while, a little head shake or a widening of the eyes when he was getting the perverted fuck-off vibe - mostly because she was _terrible_ at reading men and he was scared to death she was going to end up hurt. Scott knew and was silently grateful, even though he’d been with Cassandra at the time. (Truth be told, Patrick has started to wonder over the past couple of years if Scott’s ever really been serious with anyone other than Tessa. It’s a valid question.)

He can’t put any of that into words at the moment, though, and settles instead for a quiet _hmm_. It seems to satisfy Scott, who wiggles his booted toes experimentally.

“She could have anyone, and she picked me,” he says softly, as if the wonder of it still hasn’t quite left him. Patrick huffs out a half-laugh.

“That’s not so surprising,” he says, and Scott turns to look at him. “She had a huge crush on you when we were teenagers, you know.”

“Been a long time since that,” Scott says dismissively, and flicks his fingers out as if to brush all that teenage drama away. “Not since...not since before Vancouver. And then there was Fedor, and that skier...and Ryan...fucking Ryan.”

Patrick is not at all sure that he’s comfortable sitting in a darkened stairwell listening to Scott list off Tessa’s past romantic partners with acid in his voice, but there doesn’t exactly seem to be a good exit strategy.

“Look,” he says in an effort to shift this conversation in a slightly more positive direction, “that’s been a while. And you two are good. Better than good. Yeah, today wasn’t what anyone wanted, but it doesn’t mean you can’t win. Just...bad luck today. That’s all.”

As pep talks go, it’s not his best, but it is nearly 4:00 in the morning, and he’s had at least three shots, and he just desperately wants to go to bed. It’ll do.

Scott looks over and smiles a little.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, a bit more clearly. “We’re good. We’re together, and it’s good. Never knew how I much I wanted that till it happened. Didn’t know how good it could be.”

He can feel his ears turning red. Jesus, but Scott’s sappy when he’s drunk.

“Uh-huh,” he mutters, and pretends to re-tie his shoelace. “That’s...ah, great.”

“And we’ll win the next one,” Scott says with determination. “I’ll make it up to her. We’ll win the next one. Hell, we’ll win the fucking Olympics. That’ll do it.”

Patrick tries not to laugh, because Scott’s dead serious, but it’s just _funny_.

“Yep, nothing says ‘I love you’ like winning the Olympics,” he deadpans, but Scott’s eyes are wide and earnest.

“You think I should propose on the podium?” he asks, one eyebrow quirking up, and sweet Mother of God, but this conversation has taken a weird left turn.

“All right, come on, time for bed,” he says, standing up and getting a fistful of Scott’s jacket. “When you start talking about proposing on top of the podium at the damn Olympics, it is time for you to go to sleep. And not _here_ ,” he says quickly, forestalling the possibility that Scott will just decide to curl up on the landing.

“All right,” Scott says amiably and lurches into an upright position. “I’ll propose somewhere else. Doesn’t matter where as long as she says yes.”

Patrick shoves him gently up the next two steps and wonders if Tessa has any idea what’s in store.

“Please tell me you haven’t picked out a ring.”

Scott pauses mid-step and turns to grin down at him goofily.

“Nah. Wanna go with me?” he asks, and Patrick can _feel_ his eyes widen to three times their normal size.

“Maybe later,” he says, and claps Scott on the back, half in encouragement, half to get him to keep climbing. “Right now, how about we just, you know, go to bed?”

“Okay,” Scott agrees. “But ring shopping. Later.”

“Right,” Patrick says, and devoutly prays that this whole thing will be forgotten when Scott wakes up. He’s willing to bet Tessa knows absolutely nothing about this plan, and if there’s one thing he’s learned about Tessa over the years, it’s that she does _not_ like getting blindsided.

“Chiddy,” Scott says as they weave onto the landing of their floor and Patrick starts searching for his key card again. “You’re a good friend, Chiddy. The best. Make an excellent best man.”

“Thank you,” Patrick says gravely, and steers him in the direction of their room before he can wander off into the laundry facilities. “After some sleep, we can absolutely discuss the wedding party. No problem.”

“Mmkay,” Scott mutters, and then they’re at their door, which magically opens the first time he tries to unlock it, and he’s bundling Scott onto the bed and taking off his shoes. Ten minutes later there’s no sound but Scott’s snores and the splashing of water into the sink as he brushes his teeth by the dim light of the bedside lamp. He spits out a mouthful of toothpaste and glances over at his friend, sleeping peacefully under the heavy hotel duvet. He had no idea before tonight that Scott wanted to propose, that he had plans that stretch well past the Olympics and into the rest of his life. Their lives, really. Had no idea how much being with Tessa, loving Tessa, has driven him for the past few years.

He hadn’t realised how far this whole thing went, he thinks. Hadn’t realised at all.

* * *

 

He comes out of the memory with a snap, looks over at Scott, who is looking blindly at the ice as if he’s somewhere else, far away. This is so fucking _ridiculous_ , he thinks, because even though he doesn’t quite understand what Tessa was trying to do with this whole don’t-talk-about-the-future thing, he thinks he kind of gets it. She wanted their whole focus here, in Pyeongchang, wanted them sharp and hungry and not complacent, and she never once thought that he’d assume she didn’t want him back. He didn’t ask why, she assumed he knew...and now the entire thing has spun out into something neither of them intended.

Shit.

“So...all those interviews where you’ve been saying you’ve got to figure out it out…?” he asks, for lack of something better to say. Scott shrinks down in his chair.

“Not a lie,” he mutters, picking at his thumbnail. “We were gonna wait until we got home, and I was okay with that. I mean, I thought I was okay with that. But today - today is the last time on Olympic ice, the last time with her, and that fucking song...I don’t know. I don’t know how in the hell I’m going to hold it together this afternoon.”

Patrick nods. He can understand exactly what Scott’s not saying - the nostalgia welling up like dark honey in the blood, laced with the fear that once this is over it’ll all come crashing down, everything disappearing at once when the structure of competition and training is gone.

“Look, man, I get it,” he says, and claps his hand to Scott’s shoulder once again, a reminder that he’s here and it’s going to be okay eventually. “But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. She’s in this. Really in this. And no matter what happens after you stop competing, I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”

There’s a quaver at the corners of Scott’s mouth, and his eyes suddenly seem very young. Of the two of them, he’s three years older, but right now Patrick feels like he’s looking at a teenager with his first crush.

“You think?” is all he says, but there’s a world of hope in those two words.

“Yeah, I do,” Patrick replies, and whacks him hard on the back in a sort of half-hug. “I really do. Now stop with this mopey bullshit and get your head in the game. We have partying to do after the gala, and I don’t want to deal with you getting plastered and whining in a corner to me all night. It ruins my game.”

Scott raises an eyebrow. He looks a bit brighter and more cheerful, on the whole.

“Since when do you have game?” he asks, and grins smugly. Patrick shoots him a dirty look, even though he’s inwardly relieved. If Scott’s grinning, he’s over the worst of it.

“I have plenty of game,” he announces with grandiose confidence. “I’m talented, intelligent, and well-spoken. Ladies appreciate that.”

Scott guffaws and stands up.

“Yeah, sure,” he scoffs. “ _That’s_ what the ladies are looking for. Being well-spoken. You got it, dude.”

Chuckling, Patrick shoves at him, and grins when Scott pulls him into a bear hug.

“Thanks, Chiddy,” he mutters awkwardly, and they clap each other on the back once, roughly. When they back away, he can see the look on Scott’s face, that absurdly sincere smile. _This_ , right here, is the real reason they’ve been friends since they were gangly teenagers with acne and a shared love for the ice. This, every single time.

“Anytime,” he answers, and means it. There are skaters gathering down below for practice, and Scott glances down at them thoughtfully, then grabs his duffel bag and turns to the stairs.

“See you after?” he says, and grins wide like he actually means it. It’s a good thing to see.

“Yeah,” Patrick answers, and then Scott’s gone, off to do one more run-through before this afternoon.

Patrick glances at his watch and does some mental calculations. He doesn’t want to. That much he’s sure of. But he can’t in good conscience let this go, not with so much on the line. He struggles with the idea that this is none of his business, which is absolutely true. On the other hand, when has that ever stopped either of them?

His mind made up, he turns and jogs down the stairs two at a time. He has about an hour before practice is over, three before the gala starts. It’s enough time, he thinks.

He’s going to talk to Tessa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many shippery things to note here!
> 
> Let's start at the beginning. I based the entire concept for this chapter on all the interviews they did in Pyeongchang where they seemed fairly up in the air about their plan post-Games, as well as a conversation with my lovely beta in which she postulated that they didn't let themselves plan anything after Pyeongchang as a way to stay focused. You are free to disagree with my read on this, of course, but I thought it was reasonably logical. 
> 
> As a matter of clarification, I should point out that Patrick Chan was not actually competing in the Grand Prix Final in Nagoya in 2017. Virtue and Moir were, however, and did lose to Papadakis/Cizeron by roughly two points. Not a good moment. 
> 
> I also had a lot of fun weaving in little moments that the fandom has pointed out of late (especially on Twitter). For instance, the excellent video from their reality show in which some smarmy reporter personage is flirting with Tessa and Chiddy is shaking his head, wide-eyed, in the background. Or the whole quote from Scott "Rom-Com" Moir about him coming back to competition just to skate with Tessa. (I do not remember the links...sorry! If I run across them, I'll link them here.) Anyway, getting the chance to give the fandom a shout-out here and there was just delightful. 
> 
> Finally, I spent the first few paragraphs as a sort of a love letter to Patrick Chan. I absolutely respected and admired the three men who made it to the top of the podium at the 2018 Games. They deserved to be there. But Patrick Chan and Adam Rippon were the only two performers that night who actually made me choke up. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby watching Patrick skate to "Hallelujah." That's not a slam against Yuzuru or Shoma or Javi. It's just that Patrick created a moment, a connection to the music and the audience, that was unparalleled that night. Watching him take the Olympic ice for the last time was a privilege and an honour, and I am incredibly grateful that I got to witness it. So, this was my opportunity to give him a little of the approbation which I feel is due. (Thank you for coming to my TED talk.)
> 
> If you have a question about where something else came from (or want to present a different POV), feel free! I adore interacting with commenters and fellow shippers. :)


	6. Body Check

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He needs to move. He needs to _run_. He needs to get out of there as fast and as silently as his two legs will take him, but he can’t. He absolutely can’t. 
> 
> He’s frozen there, fighting to breathe through the shock that has paralyzed his brain, because he may have suspected that there was something going on between them over the last couple of months, and he may have always known that their partnership was a very unique one in any number of ways, but he never, _never_ expected to see _this_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all...I am so sorry this has taken so long to post. Work has been hell on wheels the past two weeks, and I simply haven't had time to write and edit like I have before. I hope the next chapter will not take _nearly_ so long to get posted. 
> 
> Second, remember how I said in the last chapter that my plot had grown teeth and fangs and turned on me? It's still happening. I don't know how to stop it - apparently my muse is obsessed with flashbacks. I just follow where she leads. 
> 
> Finally, I tried my hand at a wee, tiny bit of smut here. It was difficult, given who my narrator is for this entire fic, but I tried. It's nowhere _near_ the amazing level of smut by many of the very talented authors in this fandom, but I hope it suits nevertheless. 
> 
> Thank you again for all the lovely comments and kudos - when work calms down a bit, I promise to come back and reply to each and every one of you! Here's to V/M, and their fic-inspiring brilliance. Hope you enjoy. :)

He knocks on her door two hours before the gala is supposed to begin.

Immediately this, simple as it is, brings back more memories. So many memories, although thankfully not all of them involve copious amounts of alcohol this time. Patrick thinks back over the past two years or so and thinks that he has enough traumatic, brain-searing memories of the two of them to last him a lifetime. (He also thinks that he’s going to forward them every single therapy bill from here on out. They _owe_ him. Seriously owe him.)

For instance, there’s the night he found out what exactly was going on with the two of them.

* * *

 God knows there’d been open speculation in the skating world about them since...hell, since before Vancouver. They were so _good_ , for one thing, so much raw talent, so much passion, that everyone assumed that there had to be something going on off the ice as well as on it. And then, of course, there was the fact that skating tends to be an insular community, and it’s apparently hard to maintain a healthy relationship outside of it. There’s a reason that so many skaters end up dating other skaters, or at the very least other athletes. Who else could possibly understand the demands of a competitive athletic career; who else would be willing to cede so much time and attention to something so all-consuming?

But even in the internecine world of figure skating - and particularly ice dancing - dating your partner has never been considered a good idea. It’s messy, it’s confusing, it affects your work, and the fallout is inevitably brutal either personally or professionally (in the worst cases, it’s both). So, for years all the speculation about Scott and Tessa, all the _are they or aren’t they_ , has been tempered by the realisation that if they’re still competing together, they can’t really be romantically involved off-ice. The rest of the world has had a thousand and one conspiracy theories, but the general assumption in the skating community has unilaterally been that they had certainly fooled around, maybe even been together for a brief period here and there, but that it never was _serious_.

Patrick knows better...has always known better.

He’s been friends with them both for over a decade, and he’s been privy to things no one else will ever see or hear. He doesn’t claim to know everything, but he does know this: the only adjective that truly applied to their relationship, at least up until their comeback, was “messy.” (“Semi-codependent” and “utterly confusing” were also high on the list.) And even though both of them had dated other people, with varying degrees of serious intent, there was always the sense that you couldn’t say one name without the other, that they came as a matched set. It rolled off the tongue that way, _ScottandTessa_ , and no matter how much they might have resented it at times, the blend just stuck. (It still does.)

For him, the funniest part of the entire thing is that it has never been just about their shows. They absolutely bring a fire, a chemistry to the ice, but that’s never been the thing that makes everyone suspect that there’s something _else_ going on. Even when they were teenagers, all the moments that raised eyebrows, especially when they were in public - hugs that lasted a little too long, the way they’d find each other on the ice no matter what show it was or what anyone else was doing, the moments when they’d look at each other like the world could stop spinning and they’d never notice - those moments were hardly choreographed. (There was a _reason_ everyone assumed they’d done it at least once, and it wasn’t just because of the Carmen routine.)

But the thing is (the thing that nobody seems to remember) is that Patrick has the memory of an goddamn _elephant_ , and that he’s been there through it all - the awkward teenage years skating together, hanging out at every competition, traveling during tour after tour. He’s been there in the behind-the-scenes moments, the banquets, the parties in messy living rooms and even messier basements, hotel rooms draped with people at 4:00 in the morning. He’s watched this thing between them begin and grow and morph and nearly break and then come back stronger than ever, and he remembers it all even when they’d sometimes rather he didn’t.

After all, he’s the one who’s been there for everything the world didn’t get to see. He’s the one who remembers Scott’s living room and, later, his apartment, and God, innumerable hotel rooms...all the long nights when the two of them were so tired they could have fallen over but were still too keyed up to go to sleep. Long nights sitting up with half-empty bottles of Molson littering the floor between them, listening to Scott mumble ridiculous nonsense about how her hair smelled like strawberries and no one had ever felt so right in his arms and how he’s always wanted to kiss her off the ice, just once, because the staged kisses were never enough and he just wanted to know if the real thing was as mind-blowing as he imagined it to be. And Patrick would nod, and murmur sympathetically, and think quietly to himself that if they’d just succumb to the urge and sleep with each other, just once, maybe he’d get to have a quiet evening and actually go to bed every once in a while.

After Sochi...he doesn’t really like to think about after Sochi. Too many nights on the half-varnished floor of the house Scott was remodeling in Ilderton, straight Jack instead of beer, and something like heartbreak spilling onto the floor between them. Too many nights where all the girls he’d ever loved (Kaitlyn, Cassandra, the others) blended together until the only name he could slur out was _Tessa_ , and that always came in combination with _silver_ and _retired_ and _she’s got a boyfriend now_. And those nights always, always ended with the words that dropped like stones from his mouth, heavy and bitter: _she’s not coming back._

Then there was tour, after. Going around the world together, the cast of characters around them ever-changing, and he never knew if they were in love or hated each other, and neither did they. There were nights during those months when the two of them were barely speaking and he and Scott would sit on the balconies of innumerable hotel rooms with whisky (when they could find a good brand) and vodka (when they couldn’t), and they’d drink in stony silence. A few months into the touring schedule, though, and it was different - there were nights when Scott would sneak out of their room at night and come back early in the morning smelling like vanilla and Tessa’s body lotion, would slide back into his own bed with a smirk that spoke volumes. He didn’t talk about what it would be like to kiss her anymore, didn’t talk about any other girls, and when he announced he was breaking up with Kaitlyn a week into their second tour of the season, Patrick couldn’t really find it in himself to fake surprise.

All of which goes to say that when they texted him to tell him they were coming back to competition (Scott with a simple, to-the-point message and Tessa with at least five smiley-face emojis), he was both elated and a little concerned.

Nevertheless, their comeback seemed to be going off without a hitch. He and Scott kept in touch, a bit more than he did with Tessa, and it all seemed to be smooth sailing, although Patrick privately had his doubts.

And then he flew to Quebec to watch the Autumn Classic.

He went to Quebec partly because his coaches kept telling him he needed to scout out the competition, partly because he wanted to get a feel for how his programs held up in the mix, and mostly because he wanted to watch his friends compete. Not just Tessa and Scott, although they were foremost, but Keegan and Larkyn and Alaine were also competing, and a younger (greener) pair of ice dance teams, and it was close enough that he could afford to take off a couple of days of training, throw on his Team Canada jacket, and go cheer for his people.

That’s the first time he sees their Prince routine (he loves Tessa’s choice to depart from the norm and wear a bodysuit - and she looks amazing in it). They’re doing great things, and he can already tell how incredible they’re going to be with another year of hard work put in. But that’s not what he notices. There’s something else there - a different energy between them, a crackle like a downed wire, a buzz that send the ice between them singing with the vibrations.

That’s also the first time he notices how...handsy they’ve both gotten. They’re ice dancers, and it’s hardly unusual for them to touch behind the boards, during practice, after their skate while they’re sitting in the Kiss and Cry. But this, this is a whole new level of touching. At one point, he swears he sees Scott palm her ass, and he nearly falls out of his seat in the stands. _What the hell is going on with them_ , he wonders.

If anything, they’re even _worse_ at Skate Canada in October. They’re skating their program to “Latch” this year, and Patrick will be damned if he doesn’t catch Scott leaning in to kiss her neck during practice, bold as you please while she flies in circles ’round his waist. They’re all over each other, every single practice, and he catches himself more than once giving them the eyebrow when they lean in a little too close, linger a little too long with hands in places they really, really shouldn’t be. Something is going on, something Patrick can’t quite put his finger on, but he knows there’s a change in how they are now. Definitely a change.

He doesn’t end up going to the NHK, but he sees the videos. It’s still there, that indefinable _something_ , and one day he’s lazily playing around online and happens to see a video clip of them in the Kiss and Cry. It’s from some slightly-obsessed fan (which Patrick finds kind of adorable), and the caption says “EXCUSE ME, MR. MOIR.” Patrick has absolutely no clue what that’s about at first, but he quickly clues in once he presses play. There they are, in front of God knows how many cameras, Tessa pressing a kiss to the back of his neck, his arms all the way around her, looking for all the world like two lovers casually intertwined.

Patrick’s starting to think that whatever is going on with them is getting a bit carried away.

That opinion solidifies permanently at the GPF in December at Marseilles. The weather is slushy and miserable, and he feels the beginnings of a head cold coming on. It’s Tuesday night, Scott’s off somewhere (he thinks Scott said something about Tessa and practice, but it all blurred together), and he’s starting to get cabin fever staring at the wallpaper in their hotel room. So when Javi texts him and says that the guys are all going out to get a drink, he’s downstairs in less than five minutes.

They have a great time, even if Patrick misses Scott’s boisterous presence a bit at the bar. Adam keeps them in stitches with an extremely accurate imitation of the adenoidal airline stewardess on his flight over, Yuzu and Shoma end up doing truly terrible karaoke, and no one lets Nathan have more than two beers, so all in all, it’s a good night. When they finally head back to the hotel, Patrick feels warm and comfortable and just a little loose, the pounding headache that had been looming for a day and a half smoothing out into a dull ache behind his eyes. He’s ready to curl up and go to sleep, let himself ease into relaxation before the blinding tension of the rest of the week, and he’s a little glad that Scott’s off doing other things. It’ll be nice to just have a little time to himself right now.

He opens the door with his key card, the one that he has to slide in and out at least three times before it’ll work. He’s so irritated over the damn thing that he doesn’t even notice the fabric tangled in his sneakers until he nearly faceplants onto the couch. Swearing under his breath, he reaches down and picks it up, puzzled. It’s a white T-shirt, very soft, and it’s far too small to be Scott’s.

He thinks that’s a bit odd, but it still doesn’t sink in as he heads through the little sitting area and rounds the corner to the bedroom. He only really begins to get an inkling when he hears a noise that sounds suspiciously like a groan, followed a woman’s muffled laugh, and then he’s standing there in the doorway of the bedroom like a statue, standing in place.

He cannot _believe_ this. He cannot fucking believe this. They’ve always had an unspoken code, he and Scott, that they won’t bring a girl back to their shared room without letting the other one know. (Not that it happens all that often, but still.) And yet here is his roommate and best friend, bold as brass, pressing some girl up against the wall with her legs wrapped around his waist, her hands running up his bare chest, his head buried in her neck as he whispers something in her ear. While he stands there, speechless with surprise, Scott presses up against her and groans again, roughly, as her small hands come up to tangle in his dark hair. She rolls her hips and hisses something unintelligible, and Patrick notices through his daze that she seems to be wearing lacy black underwear and absolutely nothing else. (He does note that her bra is draped theatrically over the lamp between their beds, and damn if that’s not clichéd.)

Suddenly, he’s just _pissed_. He’s pissed that Scott decided to get tipsy and bring some random girl back to their shared room without so much as a by-your-leave. He’s pissed that his best friend is once again choosing to run off to booze and and an easy lay instead of just _dealing_ with his messy feelings about his sometimes-platonic partner like a grown-up. Mostly, though, Patrick discovers that he’s pissed on _Tessa’s_ behalf, which is a new and interesting twist. He can’t for the life of him figure out why, because they’re both fully-grown adults and it is clearly none of his damn business, but still, he’s fucking furious that Scott’s here grinding up against some random woman instead of focusing on the partnership that’s been their sole priority for the past six months. It’s infuriating.

He’s so mad, so boiling hot with it, that is takes him a full minute to realise the truth. Honestly, it doesn’t really click until she throws her head back and murmurs Scott’s name, and even though he can’t see her clearly, he knows that voice - has known it for nearly half his life.

And...sweet Jesus. Sweet fucking _Christ_. He just walked in on - his brain shorts out for a minute, and he can’t quite breathe. The woman who is currently wrapped around Scott like a clinging vine, the one who is about ten seconds away from well and thoroughly fucking his roommate up against a hotel room wall, the one who is currently flinging her head back with a thud and murmuring _harder, Scott,_ **_harder_ ** through clenched teeth is none other than...Tessa Virtue.

_Holy. Fuck._

He needs to move. He needs to _run_. He needs to get out of there as fast and as silently as his two legs will take him, but he can’t. He absolutely can’t.

He’s frozen there, fighting to breathe through the shock that has paralyzed his brain, because he may have suspected that there was something going on between them over the last couple of months, and he may have always known that their partnership was a very unique one in any number of ways, but he never, _never_ expected to see _this_. He just stands there, stock-still, unable to turn or flee, while he watches Tessa slide her hands around Scott’s neck, pull him to her, and proceed to ravage his mouth in a way that Patrick thinks may be illegal in several dozen countries.

Really, it’s the sound of Scott moaning against her skin that snaps him out of his daze. Patrick makes a noise - he has no earthly clue what, something between a squeak and a horrified gasp, and suddenly the spell is broken. They break apart, lips wet and bruised red, and over Scott’s shoulder Patrick catches Tessa’s eye. She turns to stone in Scott’s arms, blinking at him while time seems to go dead and still.

“Oh my God,” she whispers finally, her eyes like saucers. He can’t imagine what his expression looks like at this particular moment, but if it’s anything like hers, sheer terror doesn’t quite begin to cover it. “Oh _God_. No. _No._ ”

She drops her head to Scott’s shoulder, eyes screwed tight shut as if she can make Patrick magically go away if she just can’t see him anymore. Scott, who clearly has no idea what’s going on but can tell something is off, presses his lips to her neck, just under her ear.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he murmurs. “What, did I do something?”

Tessa moans in abject misery and shakes her head against his shoulder.

“What?” He’s starting to sound seriously worried now, and Patrick still can’t make himself move. Or look away. Or do anything, really. He’s just going to stand here until he grows roots and branches and dies withered and old on this hideously carpeted floor. It’s his unpleasant fate, apparently.

Scott pulls back and gently tries to tug her away from his shoulder so he can see her face. Tessa stubbornly refuses to move, though, muscles straining as she buries her face deeper in the join of his shoulder and neck.

“ _Chiddy’s here_ ,” is what he thinks she mumbles into Scott’s ear. It must have been something close, at any rate, because his head whips around like he’s been scalded, he desperately tries to shift Tessa so nothing illicit is showing...and then there’s a moment that stretches for forever, an awful, searing, mind-numbing moment in which Patrick and his best friend lock eyes and cannot look away. Neither one can say a thing - just stand there staring in horrified disbelief.

Patrick still has no idea what finally galvanizes him. Maybe his brain finally catches up to a sliver of what’s going on, maybe the sheer awkwardness of the entire thing gives him a mental kick, he doesn’t know. What he does know is that he manages to open his mouth and form actual words, at last.

“I…” he starts, and then has to stop and regroup. Maybe _actual words_ was a long shot. “I am...I am so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so...God. Ummm. I, umm…”

He stops stammering and stares at the ceiling, like he should’ve five minutes ago, and waits for more words to come. They’re taking their sweet time.

“I’m just...I’m gonna go. I’m gonna go, and be...be somewhere else. Somewhere...not here. Right. Yes. You two - ah, carry on. That is - I - ”

He eyes a water stain that’s spreading above Scott’s bed and wishes, not for the first time tonight, for a merciful death to come and take him.

“Anyway,” he says, still not making eye contact. “Umm. Have fun. Yes.”

He coughs, because if he doesn’t he’ll never stop babbling, and then makes a rapid about-face and marches out the door like a condemned man fleeing his prison walls. He’s never been so glad to get out of anywhere in his entire _life_.

* * *

 He sits in the lobby, curled up in one of the big, squishy chairs in front of the faux fireplace with its digital flame display that flickers unconvincingly every now and again. He’s alternating between playing Angry Birds on his phone and wondering if there’s such a thing as a localized lobotomy when he hears soft footsteps padding behind him. He turns, and to his great surprise finds Tessa.

“Hi,” she says, a bit shyly, and perches herself on the arm of his chair. He stares up at her, wondering what the hell she’s up to, and where Scott is.

“Scott’s hiding in my room and says he’s never coming out again,” she says, by way of explanation. “He also says he can never look you in the eye again. How that’s going to work with the whole roommate thing I can’t exactly tell you.”

To his even greater surprise, Patrick finds himself snickering. She grins at him, relief palpable in her eyes, and he reaches up to touch her arm, a silent sort of reassurance that it’s all going to be okay eventually.

“So…” he says, the weird feeling in his chest beginning to dissipate, “you two are together, huh?”

She blushes so brightly he can see it even in the dim light of the fake fire.

“Yeah,” she says, very softly, but there’s a sort of smug pleasure in the corners of her smile, a silent _I did that_ and _he’s mine_ that is a tiny bit possessive and mostly just overjoyed. Patrick tilts his head back against the soft plush of the chair and smiles.

“When did that happen?” he inquires, because he figures he can’t possibly overstep his bounds more than he already has, and damn it, he’s _curious_.

She bites her lip and fiddles with a stray thread on the chair’s arm, worrying it back and forth between her fingers.

“About two months after we announced our comeback,” she says, refusing to meet his eyes, which is fine, because he’s currently trying very hard not to choke.

“That was six months ago!” he splutters. She smiles a little sheepishly.

“I know,” she says, and tugs at the thread, watching it unravel under her fingers. “We didn’t tell anyone. Not even our families, at first. Jordan only found out because she was in for a visit and walked in one morning to surprise me with coffee.” She pauses for a moment. “I mean...it was definitely a surprise. Mostly for her.”

Patrick can’t help it. He brings both hands up to cover his face and giggles like a small child.

“She walked in on you two?!” he manages, because he thought it was bad enough for _him_ to catch the two of them almost in the act, but he can’t imagine how much worse it would be for her poor sister.

Tessa blushes again and stares at her hands.

“Not exactly,” she says slowly. “It was a Saturday, and we weren’t training that morning, so we were asleep. But, you know...in the same bed.”

Patrick can feel his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. Good _God_ , but that must have been awkward. Not as awkward as walking in on two of your closest friends going at it against a wall, but still.

“I can feel a great deal of sympathy,” he observes, and she swallows hard and gives him a beseeching look (mostly because she knows him, and she knows that it will work).

“I’m sorry,” she says, and clearly means it. “We didn’t - I didn’t - we should have thought before we...anyway,” she finishes, not very coherently. “I didn’t mean for you to walk in on _that_.”

He shrugs and pats her shoulder.

“I mean, I’ve been researching ways to bleach my brain for the past twenty minutes, but other than that, I think I’m okay,” he says, and quirks an eyebrow at her. “Seriously, Tess, it’s okay. I may be a little scarred, but I’ll survive. I just didn’t realise you two were - ”

“Together?” she supplies, and the euphemism almost makes him start giggling again. _Together_ doesn’t describe the half of it.

“Sure,” he agrees, drily. “Together. Anyway. When _are_ you two planning to tell people? I mean, I assume you haven’t told Skate Canada.” An idea suddenly occurs to him. “Oh, shit, do Marie and Patch know?”

Tessa gets an incredibly guilty look on her face.

“I think so,” she mutters. “Marie keeps giving me this _look_ . Not like the one Marina would’ve given me. It’s like a _knowing_ look. I think she suspects.”

Patrick very kindly decides to not point out that everyone in the figure skating world and plenty of people outside of it have _suspected_ for years. No point rubbing it in right now.

"Uh-huh,” he hums. “But no one else? Kaitlyn, Andrew, Meagan, Eric…” He does a quick mental inventory, runs back through all the likely candidates. There are some old friends on the list, Joannie, Jeff, a few others, but he’s not sure they’d be privy to that much these days.

She shakes her head quickly.

“No, no one,” she says, a nervous bite to her tone. “We haven’t...we’re not ready. It’s still so new, you know?” Her eyes are on his now, pleading for understanding. “It’s so new, and things could still go sideways. We could ruin everything, lose everything we’ve worked for, if this goes south. So we agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone yet. Just us, just...just to give it some time.”

She looks so scared, he thinks with a sudden swell of sympathy, so afraid of what she’s done and what it could do to her, to them, and without thinking he reaches over and takes her hand in his. She squeezes it gratefully, and then leans over until her cheek is resting on the top of his head.

“Do you think we screwed up?” she whispers, and he knows she’s asking it like this so she can’t see the answer in his eyes. He waits for a beat, really thinks it through, and then shifts out from under her so he can see her face.

“No, I don’t,” he says gently, and something shifts in her expression, something tightly strung that loosens infinitesimally at the sound of his words. “I think you two were always going to end up like this, honestly, one way or another. And the timing - that it’s now, in the middle of your comeback - honestly, Tess? That may be the thing that puts you on top this time.”

He regrets his choice of words the second he says it, but fortunately her mind isn’t in the gutter, too busy spinning through how this could work in their favour.

“What do you mean?” she asks, and he shrugs, trying to put a vague, amorphous concept into words.

“Look, it’s always been about the partnership first with you two,” he says, and she nods. It’s the truth, and they both know it. “But there’s always been this _thing_ between you, too. Something that goes past partners, past skating. And right now, with everything on the line, when you have to focus on this one goal - maybe it’s not the worst idea to focus on each other too, you know? Let it all happen together.”

He’s not doing a great job of explaining what he means, but she seems to get it, even smiles a little as she mulls over the idea.

“You think the relationship will make us better,” she says, and he hears both the hope and the incredulity in her voice. It surprises him.

“You don’t, Tess? Then why the hell did you - ”

And then it hits him. Why she’s so nervous, why he walked in on them desperately making out in a shared hotel room (at a competition, no less), why there seems to be no planning or reasoning to any of this despite the fact that the most organised woman of his acquaintance is involved.

They didn’t mean for this to happen - at least, not like this. They didn’t _plan_ on this. He goggles at her, practically open-mouthed, while he sorts this through.

Holy _shit_.

“Oh.” He says it after a long moment. “Ohh. Oh, _Tessa_.”

She giggles, high-pitched and nervous, and stifles it with a hand to her mouth.

“I know,” she murmurs behind her fingers. “It’s crazy, I know. But...it’s Scott. I don’t - it was just _him_ . And it’s been so many years, and we’ve nearly gone there so many times and always backed away too soon, and then we were doing the comeback, and doing Moulin Rouge, and it just...it just _happened_.”

Patrick shakes his head and can’t stop the stupidly large grin from forming.

“God, you two,” he says, but it’s fond more than exasperated. “You are both so damn _stupid_ when it comes to each other. Why couldn’t you get this over with years ago and have 2.5 kids and a minivan by now?”

She giggles again at that and kicks lightly at his shin.

“Because you can’t have 2.5 kids and still skate in the Olympics,” she says, with some seriousness. “At least, I don’t think you can. Has anyone ever tried?”

“I don’t want to know,” he says, and means it. “But look. If anyone can handle a comeback and an Olympic season _and_ a relationship with their skating partner, it’s you and Scott. You two can handle just about anything.”

Tessa’s eyes go soft, and he thinks he’s never seen her smile quite like that before.

“Always so sweet,” she murmurs. “Chiddy, what would we do without you?”

“Probably have lurid sex against a hotel room wall,” he pops off without a second thought, and then doubles over from the swift punch she lands on his ribs. (For a fairly small woman, Tessa Virtue hits _hard_.)

“Shut up,” she commands, but the corners of her mouth are twitching, and when he reaches up and ruffles her hair, she doesn’t bat him away.

“Come on,” he says, climbing up and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Time for bed. And not in my room either, I actually want to get some sleep tonight.”

He’s convinced she steps on his foot on purpose.

“Ouch,” he says grouchily as they approach the elevator, and she smirks.

Inside, though, she gets quiet and a little serious, frowning at the round numbers as they light up under her fingers.

“What?” he asks, nudging her with his shoulder. She glances up, a quick sideways look that he knows means she’s trying to decide what to say. “Tessa. Just say it.”

“I just...I don’t want things to be weird between you and Scott,” she says awkwardly, and stares hard at the brass railing along the side. “I didn’t mean for that to...well, for you to know about us, like that.”

Patrick tilts his head to one side and gives her his best _don’t be an idiot_ look.

“Scott and I will be fine,” he tells her. “Don’t worry about that. He’s a moron for not texting me that I should stay downstairs for a while, but other than that, we’re good.”

She shrugs.

“It’s still awkward.”

He nods.

“It is. Which is why you two will be buying all the beer for the rest of this competition. Possibly the next, I can’t decide exactly how traumatised I am right at this exact minute.”

He knows he’s won when she laughs, that loud, deep belly laugh that only happen when she’s genuinely cracking up. She’s still laughing when the little bell dings above their heads to announce that it’s her floor.

“Thanks, Chiddy,” she says, and wraps her arms around his neck for a quick hug. “Sorry for making you want to remove your eyeballs with a fork. Truly.”

He hugs her back, comforted by the sense of old friendship and familiarity and things being set right again.

“No problem,” he says, and watches her walk yawning to her room with a smile on his face.

Facing up to Scott turns out to be shockingly anticlimactic. He walks in the room to find his roommate sitting on the edge of his bed, turning his phone over and over in his hands as if he can’t quite figure out what it’s for. Patrick stops in the doorway (trying to erase the memories of an hour ago) and leans one shoulder against the doorjamb.

“So…” he says, slowly, and Scott looks up with mute pleading in his eyes. “You two are together.”

Scott’s eyes dart nervously from side to side, but he remains stubbornly silent, and Patrick can’t decide if he’s more irritated or impressed that Scott’s determined to keep this a secret for as long as Tessa wants.

“Tessa told me,” Patrick says, and watches Scott deflate in utter relief.

“Oh,” he says, and finally sets his phone down on the bedspread. “Oh, thank God. I didn’t know…”

He trails off, and Patrick grins, because they’ve been friends for so long he can read between the words Scott doesn’t say.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he says next. It feels like an important thing to say at this juncture.

“I know,” Scott says easily, and shrugs. “I wasn’t worried about it.”

“Right.” Patrick comes in and flops lazily on the bed, stares up at the ceiling and that damned water stain. “So. Speaking of things to be worried about…”

He pauses and lets Scott squirm for a minute, lets him wonder what exactly he’s going to say now.

“...if you two plan on working out any little kinks in your skating partnership in our shared room from now on, you might leave a sock on the door or something. Or at the very least text me. Tessa probably knows an emoji that’ll work just fine.”

The next thing he knows, Scott’s pillow is flying at his face and he’s cackling so hard he can’t breathe. God, but this is going to be _fun_.

* * *

And it has been, he thinks as he stands in the impersonal hotel hallway, interchangeable with so many others through the years. It hasn’t always been easy, God knows, carrying their secrets around with him like extra luggage, hiding their complicated truths from the world and protecting them when and where he could. Sometimes he wishes that he were friends with normal people, skiers or curlers or swimmers, and then he thinks that maybe they aren’t normal either, and anyway, he can’t imagine the last decade and a half without Scott and Tessa’s faces in every other memory. They’re family now, have been for a long time, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

He lets out a long breath, slowly, and waits for Tessa to open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record...my timeline is actually accurate here. The championships in Patrick's flashback are in order, and the correct people competed in them. 
> 
> The only thing I fudged here was the order of V/M's progressive levels of feeling each other up during the 2016 season. Everything I referenced here is on video somewhere - I have no idea exactly where or if the incidents I referenced happened at the championship I attached them to in the fic. If you're a V/M fan and have a link or care to correct my timeline, feel free!
> 
> Also, please excuse my mini essay on Patrick's longstanding bond with V/M. Every once in a while, I need to fangirl about Chiddy for a bit, because he's precious and adorable and so Canadian I think he bleeds white and red. Bear with me. :)


	7. Third Goal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Patrick makes mediocre tea, is a supportive friend, and gives Tessa some home truths. 
> 
> (also, in which he spills the beans in a truly epic fashion)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience and encouragement while I worked on this absolute _bear_ of a chapter. I have struggled with this thing for over a week, and I think I finally have a handle on it. This was the messiest and most difficult chapter to write by far, so please bear with me. I owe a great deal of thanks to pumpkinpasties for her encouragement and willingness to talk me through the nuances of characterization in this chapter - you are truly the best!
> 
> So many of you wanted to find out what happens in this conversation between T and Chiddy - I hope this lives up to your expectations. Thanks again for your lovely kudos and comments. You are amazing, and I appreciate your support more than I can say!
> 
> (Also, enormously long author's note at the end, if you're interested in why Tessa makes the choices she does in this chapter. Feel free to skip if lengthy character notes are not your thing.)

 When he hears the little click that means she’s opened the peephole and is staring suspiciously out into the hallway, he gives a cheery wave. She swings the door open a second later, looking a little surprised.

“Hey, Chiddy,” she says, and smiles, a bit bewildered. “I didn’t expect you here. Come on in.”

He shrugs and raises his eyebrows as he walks in.

“I didn’t really expect me here either, but…”

He trails off, and she closes the door behind him and comes to stand by the couch, her eyebrows puckering together like they do when she’s puzzled.

“You okay?” she says gently. “You look worried.”

He stalls for a minute, because he’s not sure how to say what he’s come here to say, and then she holds up a hand and sneezes. Loudly.

“Ugh, this cold,” she groans and grabs a tissue from the box on the coffee table. “Scott gave me the damned thing, kept telling me the only reason he lost his voice was because of the hockey game. I should have _known_ better than to listen. He never thinks he’s sick, just keeps pushing and pushing until he’s seriously ill. Stupid man.”

She stops talking and turns a little pink.

“Sorry,” she says, and sniffs into the tissue. “He’s been...weird the past couple of days, and I feel horrible, and it’s just all getting to me today. I’m sorry. Anyway, what were you going to say?”

Patrick looks at her, nose buried in a handful of Kleenex, bare feet and Lululuemons and a loose tank top, hair in a messy braid, and thinks that he has no idea _what_ to say, how to get involved in this. He knows he has to try, though.

“Maybe I should make you some tea or something,” he suggests, and steers her into the little kitchenette. “You’re starting to sound a little hoarse.”

She plops down on one of the stools and rests her chin on her hand.

“You do make the best tea, Chiddy,” she says, and he smiles at her. She coughs hoarsely and takes in a wheezing breath, then makes a face at the noise.

“Thank God I skate for a living and don’t sing. I’d sound like a frog all the time,” she says, and he grins as he fills up the kettle. (She always has a kettle in her room. He has no idea how.)

“You’re not as bad as Scott, though,” he points out, and she giggles. “I love him and all, but God, karaoke night is like having an icepick shoved through my ears.”

Tessa snickers, and then looks faintly ashamed of herself.

“He’s very proud of Gangster’s Paradise - you can’t ruin that one for him.”

Patrick snorts as he switches the burner on.

“At least I’m not the one who has to listen to it on long car rides,” he says, but there’s a wistfulness in back of the snark. He hopes that there are lots of bus rides, and car rides, and plane trips in their joint futures, between tours and exhibitions and God knows what else. He’s going to miss competing, but he doesn’t want to have to miss all of his teammates too. Especially not the two of them.

Tessa raises an eyebrow and sits playing with her mug, running her fingers round and round the brim.

“Long car rides sound nice right about now,” she says wistfully, and maybe he’s imagining things from his melancholy conversation with Scott, but she looks a little glum as she stares off into space.

“Ready to go home?” he asks as he digs around in her stash of tea bags, and she shakes herself out of her daze with a little jump.

“What? Oh. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. This has been...God, I don’t even think there’s a _word_ for what this has been, but I’m so beyond ready to be home.” She sighs. “Just to sleep in my own bed again will be heaven.”

As he rifles through her assortment of tea bags, none of which seem to be chai, Patrick finds himself nodding. He wouldn’t exchange anything in the world for his Olympic moments, all three of them, but _home_ is starting to sound sweeter by the day.

“All right, mint or lemongrass?” he asks, holding up two boxes for her perusal. “Also, do you have something against black tea? Because if so, we need to talk.”

Tessa chuckles and leans her chin on her hand, eyeing the boxes studiously.

“Mint,” she decides. “And I like herbal teas. They’re calming. Black tea is just like...well, fake coffee.”

He groans and holds one of the boxes theatrically to his heart.

“You’re killing me, Tess, truly. Such a philistine,” and her snort of laughter makes him grin. “I shouldn’t make you tea. No one should make you tea. Not until you learn how to appreciate a really finely brewed Earl Grey. Or an Assam chai. Or - ”

She cuts him off with a wave of her hand just as the kettle begins to shriek.

“Tell you what...” she says mischievously as he pours water over the tea bags and secretly longs for his teapot at home. In his opinion, anything other than premium loose leaf, properly steeped, is a travesty.

“What?” Patrick says, shaking his head over the bags. Tessa smiles at him, wide and predatory.

“You get Scott to drink Earl Grey and admit he likes it, and I’ll voluntarily taste test any kind of tea you want,” she says.

Patrick checks the timer on his phone.

“You know that’s never going to happen,” he points out. “Besides. You don’t know what you’re missing. Coffee’s great and all, but - ”

“There’s no _and all_ ,” Tessa says with mild outrage. “Coffee’s great. Period.”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, and dips the stupid little bag up and down in the hot water. “I agree. Tea is also great. Anyway...speaking of Scott.”

There it is. Apparently he’s going to open his big mouth and get into this, against his better judgement and all norms of friendship and common decency. Here goes nothing.

“What about him?” Tessa asks, and maybe he’s imagining it, but there’s already a tinge of concern in her tone. _Tread lightly_ , he thinks as he squints at the water and wonders how long these ridiculous bags take to steep properly.

“I ran into him before practice, at the arena,” he says carefully, eyes trained on Tessa’s mug. “About 45 minutes before practice, actually.”

He can feel her gaze snap towards him.

“Forty-five minutes?” she says incredulously. “What was he doing there that early?”

Patrick determines that this horrific brew is as good as it’s ever going to get and pulls out the little bag, irritated when it drips on the counter.

“Wanted some time to think, apparently,” he says, and mops up the mess. “Do you want honey?”

She nods.

“He’s never that early. For anything.”

He deliberately does not meet her eyes while he stirs in the honey, but he can hear her shifting in her seat.

“What is it?” she asks, and she’s trying to keep it light but he can hear the worry in her voice, the edges beginning to fray. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he says, and hands her the mug. She’s looking at him with that _I know you’re not saying something_ stare she has. It’s very effective. (If they ever have children, he feels for them. They’ll never get away with a damn thing.)

“We talked for a little bit,” he says, blows on his own cup of tea. He fully expects it to be awful. “He just had some stuff he needed to get off his chest, you know?”

She looks away, the muscle in her jaw tensing, then lets out a breath through her nose.

“What is it?” she says again, and looks at him full-on. “Chiddy, I’m not trying to pry, I’m not, but you’re worrying me.”

He shrugs, because now he’s gotten himself squarely into this mess, and he doesn’t know _what_ to say, isn’t sure what constitutes a betrayal of Scott or whether he should even be telling Tessa that they talked. What the hell was he thinking, coming over here thinking that he could somehow magically fix whatever’s going on between them? It’s none of his damn business, and he knows it.

She looks so anxious, though, green eyes wide and vulnerable, and something tugs at his chest because clearly something’s not okay, and wasn’t okay even before he walked in the door. _Fuck it all_ , he thinks, and perches on the counter.

“We were talking about after,” he says, and she frowns, confused. “After the Games. What happens when we go home.”

“Oh,” she says. That’s all, just a soft little _oh_ , but there’s a world of guilt in the word. She swallows and stares down into her tea.

“Tess,” he says, very gently. “What’s wrong?”

“He told you, didn’t he? That it was my idea, to not talk about what would happen with us after the Games? He told you?”

He nods, helplessly.

“Then that’s it. That’s what’s been bothering him. Damn it, he should’ve _told_ me.”

She sucks in a sharp breath; her fingers tighten on the cheap plastic countertop.

“He isn’t...he wasn’t…” Patrick flounders, trying to figure out a way to say this that doesn’t sound like Scott was just sitting around complaining about his skating partner to all and sundry. “He’s just...nervous about it. The not knowing.”

God, he sounds like an idiot. This is what meddling in your friends’ love lives will do to you, he muses bitterly.

“I know,” she says, very quietly, and her hands curl around her elbows until she’s holding herself without seeming to realise it. “I know. It’s my fault. I was the one who wanted it. Insisted on it, really.”

He frowns and takes a sip of his lemongrass tea, which is, as he expected, revolting. How the hell does Tessa _drink_ this stuff?

“Look, it’s none of my business,” he begins. “Absolutely none of my business. But...why? I know you, and you always have a reason. Always. So why wait until after the Games to talk about it?”

She takes in a long, careful breath, lets it out again slowly.

“Lots of reasons,” she says, eyes fixed on the countertop. “Mostly because I’m scared, I guess. Scared to death, actually.”

Patrick doesn’t even think about it, not after all those years, all the competitions and tours and late nights and long bus rides. He reaches over and grabs her hand, holds on tight.

“Scared of what?” he asks, and hopes that it’s enough to let her know she’s safe.

“Everything,” she says, meeting his eyes. “I’m scared of everything.”

She pushes her chair away from the counter, stands up and moves over to the window, looking out onto the tiny balcony. (His room with Scott does _not_ have a balcony, but...not the point. Definitely not the point right now.)

“Do you remember after Sochi?” she says, apropos of nothing. He frowns and sips again at his tea, which has not improved in the slightest.

“Yeah, of course.” How could he forget? It had been brutal, for all of them. 

"Everything was so...wrong back then,” she says softly. The steam wafting from her mug catches the weak winter sunlight streaming in through the plate-glass windows. “We were so off. Everything was off. I wanted...God, I wanted things to be different. I wanted  _us_ to be different. But it wasn't going to be...it didn't turn out...and then he started dating Kaitlyn, and...anyway. It just wasn't."

She stares out the window, then coughs a little and takes a sip of her tea. 

"Sorry," she says, after a moment. "I went off on my own little rabbit trail for a minute."

She shrugs apologetically.

“It’s okay,” he says. “But, Tess...I still don’t - ” He breaks off, not sure how to say what he’s thinking without sounding irredeemably rude.

She huffs out a wry little laugh.

“You don’t know what the point of all this is?” she says with a little raise of her eyebrow, and he’s reminded for a moment of her interview persona, which is all sugar and well-rehearsed lines from B2Ten until someone crosses a line, and then...well. (They don’t call Tessa Virtue an ice queen for nothing.)

“Yeah, a little,” he says, sheepishly, and suddenly her face crumples, just a little.

“The point is, it’s just been us,” she says, very softly, so softly he has to inch forward to hear her. “These past two years, it’s just been us, in this little bubble. All the other times, there have been other people to think about, but even then...when we’re skating, when we’re competing, it all just goes away. It’s just us, in the bubble. You know?”

He doesn’t. He’s been alone on the ice his entire life; the closest he’s ever come to the kind of partnership she’s describing is on tour, perhaps, the group numbers where he had to rehearse choreography in tandem. But he’s fully aware that it’s nowhere close to the same, that what she and Scott share is unique even in the world of pairs and ice dance. They truly are in a class of their own.

“The bubble’s a good thing,” he says instead, because he’s not sure how to put into words the feeling that he gets when she talks about the two of them, the little ache of loneliness that builds up inside his chest.

She shakes her head, her breath coming a little faster.

“But that’s the thing,” she says, eyes going wide. “It’s over. The bubble’s over. This is it, here, our last Olympics. We haven’t announced it yet, but we both know. This is our last competition, and God, what a way to go out, but - this is it. And now we’re just  _us_. Not Virtue and Moir, just...us.”

Patrick glances at her out of the corner of his eye. He thinks he gets what she’s saying, that competition is what they’re used to, that it’ll be hard to transition out of the intensity of the life they’ve been living for the past two years. But he’s not sure why that idea has her half-panicked.

“Okay,” he says, slowly. “I know that can be rough…”

He trails off, unsure where to go with this. She blinks a little too fast, stares out the window like it holds the secrets of the universe.

“We’re so different sometimes,” she says. It sounds so final, the words falling heavy on the ugly carpet at his feet. “Off the ice, we’re so different.”

This seems like something everyone already knows, so he's not entirely sure why she's currently finding it so upsetting; still, he'll roll with it.

“That’s not bad, though,” he says in an effort to be reassuring. “I mean, being different makes you stronger in some ways, right?”

She bites her lip, hard.

“I guess.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “But when we get home...I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”

When he glances at her, her lip is trembling and he thinks he can see a suspicious wetness gathering in her eyes.

“Tess,” he says, catching her by the elbow. “What’s going on?”

She sniffs and looks away, fighting for control.

“I don’t want to think about when we retire,” she says, plaintively, and then a single tear slides down her cheek. “I don’t want it to be over with us. I’m not ready.”

He’s not sure if she’s talking about the skating or something else, and the thought unsettles him. She’s crying now, though, so first things first.

“Come here,” he says, plucking her mug out of her hand and setting it down on the counter. She stares at him, eyes watery and desperate, and he feels a sudden surge of empathy. Whatever it is that’s got her so worked up, he wants to help. Without a word, he wraps both arms around her, and smiles when she drops her head on his shoulder with a thunk.

“Don’t,” she mutters thickly after a minute, sniffling into his shoulder. “Don’t be sweet, it’ll just make me cry more. I can’t cry, not today.”

“Shush, just be quiet and let me hug you,” he tells her sternly. She chuckles - a watery chuckle, but he’ll take it. He hangs on until she seems a little calmer and then nudges her towards the couch, snagging her mug and his along the way. “Right, then. Sit down, drink your tea, and talk to me. Something’s going on with you and Scott, and I think you need to tell somebody. And, all things considered, it might as well be me.”

She takes a long sip of her cooling tea and contemplates her shoes.

“I don’t...it’s not…” she starts, and then stops as if she can’t find a way to put any of this into words. “I don’t know how to explain it, the feeling. It’s so stupid, but I can’t get it out of my head.”

Patrick reaches over to rub her shoulder, encouragingly.

“Just say it however it comes out,” he says sympathetically. He’s no stranger to Tessa’s perfectionist streak, her need to always say things correctly, to express herself exactly as she intends. He’s a bit that way too, and he has to fight that tendency when around people who know and love him - his family, his friends. So does she.

She nods a bit, takes a deep breath while she gathers her thoughts.

“I can’t stop thinking…” she says, and grits her teeth as if willing herself to go on. “I can’t stop thinking that after we get back, after all the media dies down and things go back to normal, that we won’t stay together. That whatever happens next, we’re not going to last.”

Whatever he was expecting her to say, it sure as hell wasn’t _this_. He’s not sure if she’s saying she doesn’t _want_ to stay together with Scott or if she just doesn’t think it will happen, but either way, it’s a bombshell. He thinks for a moment of Scott’s face on a darkened hotel stairway, of a whispered conversation about groomsmen and rings, and something in his stomach twists. No wonder she hasn’t told Scott about this - it will kill him.

He tries to re-focus, with limited success.

“Why do you think so?” he says, trying for casual (although he’s pretty sure he’s failing miserably).

She rubs her thumb over the handle of her ceramic mug again and again, as if the action soothes her somehow.

“We want such different things, I think. I mean, after we get home and the dust settles, I think he’ll probably want to coach. He’d be so good at that. He has a natural talent for it - he connects so well with the kids, and he’s patient. I think maybe he’ll want to go somewhere smaller, closer to home. He loves Ilderton so much. He misses it, and his family. I don’t know if he’d move back there, but I think he’ll want to be closer. Live somewhere smaller than Montreal, less of a big-city feel.”

“And you?” Patrick asks, because she’s trailed off again with an unsettled sort of look on her face.

“I want to keep working on the fashion side of things,” she says slowly, as if she’s piecing it together in her brain before the words come out. “I want to stay in Montreal for a while, I think. At least the next year or two. I don’t want to move again - it’s exhausting. I want to tour some, although that depends...that depends on how things go with - with us.”

She looks away, and her mouth twists a little.

“I want to go back and get my master’s,” she says, and if she keeps rubbing the mug like that, she’ll take the finish right off. “I want to prove that I _can_ , more than anything. That I can do more than just this. I love skating, love it so much, but I can’t do it forever. _We_ can’t do it forever, not like this. After Sochi, things were so terrible." 

Her voice cracks, just a little, and he doesn't think it's just because of her cold.

"Things were... _awful_ , and I knew then that I needed to learn how to be me, just me. Not Virtue and Moir, just - me. And I did. I did. But then we did the comeback, and we got together, and now...now it’s all jumbled.”

The words have been pouring out of her in a rush, faster and faster as she keeps going, and when she stops abruptly it’s like a sudden shock. Patrick blinks, staring at her and trying to figure out what to say.

“You don’t think you could do any of that together? The coaching, the fashion work, any of it?” is what he settles on. It sounds a bit more accusatory than he meant, but she doesn’t seem to take it that way, fortunately.

“I don’t know,” she says, and she sounds so miserable. “I don’t think - I don’t think he wants the same things I do. I don’t think he would want to stay in Montreal, or travel as much as I’d have to for work. He loves home, and smaller towns, and family, and I love all that too, but it’s not everything I want. He’d do it for me, if I asked, but...I don’t want to stop him from doing what he really wants. I don’t want to hold him back.”

And there it is, the heart of this insane idea. She’s somehow convinced herself that the life Scott wants for himself does not necessarily have to include her. In fact, might be significantly better _without_ her.

Sweet Jesus, but that’s just stupid.

“Tessa,” he says, and then bites the inside of his cheek to keep from telling her exactly what he thinks in no uncertain terms. She’s vulnerable at the moment, and upset, and the last thing she needs is someone telling her off at the top of his lungs. “Don’t you think that maybe _you’re_ what he wants, more than the small town or the coaching or whatever? That maybe you’re sort of central to his future?”

She gives him a look that is at once hopeful and disbelieving.

“I don’t...I don’t think it’s like that,” she whispers, and now he really does have to fight the urge to yell. Also, the urge to shake her. He takes a sip of tea instead, which is a mistake because if the stuff was disgusting hot, it’s positively _foul_ cold.

“Like what?” he manages while trying not to gag.

She looks down, the corners of her mouth quivering, and he realises she's trying desperately not to cry again. After a moment, she wrests back her self-control.

“I don’t think it’s permanent for him,” she says flatly, and Patrick chokes on his tea.

“I’m sorry, _what?!_ ” he snaps, and she flushes guiltily, two bright spots of colour appearing in her cheeks. She rushes to explain. 

“I think it’s just the comeback, messing with our heads. We weren’t going to even _go_ there, we were just supposed to focus on the skating, on winning gold, and then it happened, and it was just... _there_. We didn’t plan for it, the whole relationship thing, we didn’t expect it, and then it was there and so...so I told him we shouldn’t pressure ourselves by talking about the future and after the Olympics and all of it. We agreed to put that whole conversation on hold until we were done. And then things...went from there.”

Patrick assumes _went from there_ includes everything from _had loads of mind-shattering sex_ to _finally admitted we were in love with each other_. He doesn’t want to know anything more than he already does about the former, and he’s assumed the latter for over a year now. Still...even if he can kind of understand her logic, surely things have changed since they first started whatever-this-is.

“So you’ve never asked him? Never brought it up since, what’s going to happen once you retire? You've never asked him if he's in this for good?” He notices her little flinch on the word _retire_ and files it away for later. She shakes her head, sniffs, and reaches for the Kleenex on the side table.

“No,” she says behind her tissues. “He didn’t bring it up, so I figured he was fine with it. If he were worried about it, it's Scott - he'd say something. And then...I don’t know, it just got so _big_.” She puts the Kleenex down and turns to face him. “It feels like I’ve loved him my whole life sometimes, you know? Like he’s always been there - my best friend, my partner, everything. But it wasn’t until we decided on the comeback that it got so...big, so fast. When I realised that I couldn’t breathe without him.”

She laughs, a bitter little huff.

“God, that sounds so sappy and sentimental. Like something out of a romance novel. I can’t believe I just said that.”

Patrick looks at her, all the messy emotions playing out on her face, and thinks of all the idiots over the years who have called her repressed or robotic or emotionless. _The hell she is_ , he’d always thought, and Christ, if this isn’t proof.

“Sappy and sentimental is what I’m here for,” he tells her, and she chuckles again, a bit less bitterly.

“It’s all I seem to be capable of lately,” she observes. “I cried on the damn podium, Chiddy. On the _podium_. People have pictures of it. And video.”

He grins at her cheerfully.

“That’s okay, they also have video of Scott crying like a baby at the CBC’s video montage of you two. Everyone has their moments when they can’t keep it in.”

She half-smiles.

“He was so tired that day. They shouldn’t have sprung it on him like that. I kept wanting to reach over and rub his arm or something, but they had the cameras trained right on us, and...well, to tell the truth, I was trying not to cry too.”

Patrick shakes his head. She tries so hard to maintain her iron control, especially around the media, and sometimes it backfires on her so spectacularly. It’s always been one of the reasons why she and Scott are so good together - he draws her out of her shell, gives her confidence that showing some emotion is not a bad thing, and she tames his natural exuberance, hones it into a sharp, competitive focus that has resulted in five Olympic medals and twenty years of spectacular success. It’s an excellent combination, whether she realises it or not.

“Look, Tess,” he says, trying to bring them back around to the central point of this conversation, “I know it’s terrifying, thinking about what comes next. I’m scared too, if I’m being honest. But if you two have managed to make it through the past twenty years, everything that you’ve been through and everything you’ve overcome, don’t you think you can figure this out too? Figure out a way to make the differences work?”

She stares off into space for a moment, lost in her own head. When she speaks, she still has that thousand-yard stare going. It’s a bit concerning, really.

“We’ve been together for so long,” she says, distantly. “Twenty years. Twenty years and counting. And it’s been good. Even the bad times...we wouldn’t be who we are now without them.”

Her hands fiddle nervously with her cup.

“But it’s always been the skating. That’s what brought us together, that’s what kept us together even when everything was going to hell, that’s what brought us back after Sochi. The skating. But I keep thinking…” she trails off again, presses her lips together like she’s afraid of what might come out. “What if that’s why it works? What if that’s why _we_ work? What if that’s what makes us good - the competition, the drive, the focus? What if we get home, and we retire, and then things...change? And we don’t have competition to hold us together anymore, and the whole world’s watching, and then it doesn’t...it just doesn’t _work._ ”

He stares at her. There is no fucking way she believes what she just said. And yet…

“Tessa.” It comes out a little stronger than he meant it to, but he can’t seem to help it. “Are you trying to tell me that you think the only reason you and Scott are together is because of the _skating?_ ”

She shrugs.

“Not the only reason, no.” Her voice is a tad defensive. “But what if this whole thing is just a product of being in our own little bubble for the past two years? We promised not to date anyone else, we spent all this time together...I mean, what if _this_ \- ” she waves emphatically “ - is really just from being in each other’s hip pocket for the past two years? What if it won’t last once we’re really done?”

Patrick sits and thinks for a moment. A long moment. And then he decides that enough is just  _enough._

“Tessa,” he says, very firmly. “We’ve been friends a long time. A _long_ time. I’ve watched you two around each other for nearly half my life. So believe me now when I say that I love you, and I respect you, and that was the stupidest damn thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my entire life.”

She blinks at him, shocked.

“What do you - ” she stammers, looking like she can’t decide whether to be dumbfounded or angry. He doesn’t give her the chance to figure it out.

“You two are _miserable_ without each other. Miserable. You are perfectly capable of existing apart from each other. I’ve seen it. You can go live mostly separate lives and have relationships with other people and go about your individual ways, and it looks just fine on the surface, but you are quietly miserable underneath it all the entire fucking time.”

Her eyes go very wide, but Patrick’s on a roll now and has absolutely no intention of stopping.

“I was there, remember? After Sochi, I was there. For all the tours, and the nights on the floor of Scott’s basement - ” she flinches “- and all the coffee runs at 3:00 in the morning because you couldn’t sleep. I was there. And I am telling you now that you can walk away from the skating and it’ll hurt like hell. Even if you find ways to stay in it, it hurts like hell to be done. I should know.”

He pauses, wants to make sure she’s listening.

“But walking away from each other? I think that would take a piece out of you. Out of both of you. Yes, it’s going to be different. There’s no denying that. But it’s not just the skating holding you two together. I don’t pretend to know what goes on between you 90 percent of the time, and I don’t need to. But I do know that. You two could never touch the ice another day in your lives and you’d still be together.”

She sits very still, mug pressed between white, clenched hands, staring at him. He swallows, feeling like he’s overstepped every single boundary that ever existed here, but he can’t find it in himself to take it back. People tend to underestimate him, think that the quiet former mama’s boy with the sweet smile and the tenor voice is a pushover. Tessa knows better, though - has always known better.

“You really think so?” she says finally, so quietly he can barely hear it, and he thinks back to a cold hotel lobby in Marseilles and Tessa’s eyes as she looked down from her perch on the arm of his chair. Sometimes it’s not so easy to be sure, he thinks ruefully.

“Yes, I do,” he says, and reaches out to rub her shoulder. “I thought it a year ago, and I haven’t changed my mind since. What you two decide to do when you get home is your call. But whatever it is, for God’s sake don’t do it because you’re scared that skating is all that’s keeping you together. That’s bullshit, and we both know it.”

She looks down, teeth clenched, and sets her mug down. In her lap, her fingers start twisting together, a sure sign that she’s half-sick with nerves, and he hates that he’s upset her this much. (Although, to be fair, he thinks she’s been this upset for a long time, and today is possibly just the first time anyone’s made her have it out.)

“What if it’s just like Sochi, though?” she says, and when she finally looks up her eyes are so big and scared it makes him hurt a little. “What if we do go our separate ways, and he finds somebody else eventually, and it all falls apart? What if it’s just like the last time we retired, and I’m not...enough?”

He sighs. There it is, the awful, bitter seed that's at the root of all of this. He should’ve seen this one coming.

“Tessa,” he says softly, “that wasn’t you not being enough. That was...that was Marina betraying you, and losing to Meryl and Charlie, and you and Scott being twenty different kinds of fucked-up because neither one of you knew what you wanted back then. Things went down the way they did, with you two, with Kaitlyn, with the retirement, because you both needed to grow some. And you did. This comeback - tell me if I’m wrong, but this wasn’t just your choice, or his. You _both_ wanted this.”

She nods firmly, and he notices her hands have relaxed a little.

“Yeah, of course it was,” she says. “But - ”

He makes a sharp motion with one hand, as if he’s cutting off her train of thought before it gets started.

“So why shouldn’t you _both_ want this relationship, too?” he asks her, point-blank. “Why shouldn’t you both be equally invested, retired or not? Come on, Tess, you’ve known Scott for longer than I have, longer than anyone except his own family, and you know how he commits. How damned loyal he is. Do you think he wouldn’t be like that with you, of all people?”

Her eyes are glistening with tears by the time he’s done, and he suddenly feels like a heel. He was trying to talk some sense into her, but he really didn’t mean to make her cry. He has to fix this, and fast. 

“For God’s sake, Tessa, he loves you. He is _in love_ with you,” he says, a little desperately now because he hates it when girls cry.

God, he can’t believe that he’s doing this. Chans do not _do_ this, this raw, unvarnished outpouring of emotion. That’s Scott’s bailiwick for a reason. But this is Tessa, Tessa with tears in her eyes and heartbreak in her voice, and for her (and for Scott), he’ll go there.

She sniffles and reaches for another Kleenex.

“I know,” she says, muffled in her tissue. “I know that. But I…I just don’t think that he really..."

All right, she’s just being _stubborn_ now, and he’s very done with it. This is absurd.

“He’s been talking about buying a ring since Worlds, all right?" Patrick snaps. "He wants to _marry_ you, for God’s sake."

Oh God. Oh sweet Mother of God, he did not just say that.

She’s frozen, completely still, and her eyes are _enormous_.

“A ring?” she squeaks out, and Patrick can feel the hot flush rising up from his collar. Scott is going to kill him, kill him dead and bury his mangled body where it will never, ever be found.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he chokes out. “I shouldn’t have - it was a late night, and we were kind of drunk, and he...anyway, it wasn’t something I should have told you. I mean, it’s his thing, and I - ”

She holds up a hand to stop the babble.

“He said he wanted to buy a ring?” she breathes. Patrick nods, awkwardly, because there’s really no point to denying it anymore. It’s too late - far too late.

She hauls in a deep breath, and then another.

“Oh my God,” she whispers. “Oh God. He really...oh my _God_.”

At present time, Patrick really can’t tell if she’s excited or terrified or a little of both.

“Shit,” he mutters, and rubs a hand over his face. “Don’t tell him I told you. Please. I want to get out of Korea in one piece.”

She laughs, but it’s a breathy, absent-minded thing, barely there.

“I won’t tell him,” she says, and then she’s smiling, that full-on, million-watt Tessa Virtue smile that can bring the entire world prostrate at her feet. “I won’t. But...he said that. He _said_ _that_.”

“Yes,” Patrick groans, because she looks so fucking _delighted_ and he can’t believe he went and spilled the beans. He knows Scott, and how pleased he’ll be when he finally gets around to proposing, and he doesn’t want to ruin the moment for anybody. “Yes, he said that. He also said that he wanted me to be the best man and then started planning out the flower arrangements. And I have now spoiled this for everybody.”

She laughs, a real laugh this time.

“No, you haven’t, Chiddy,” she says, glowing, and then launches herself across the couch to hug him. (He barely sets down his cup before disaster strikes.)

“You didn’t ruin _anything_ ,” she says, muffled into his shoulder, and then she pulls back and grabs his face with both hands, beaming at him with such palpable delight he can’t help but smile back. “Thank you.”

“I hope you’ll remind him of that when he figures this out,” Patrick grumbles, but he can’t bring himself to be too grouchy, not when she looks this happy. “He’s going to _kill_ me.”

“No, he won’t,” she says, and drops her hands. “It’ll be fine. I won’t spoil anything. I won’t even bring it up in passing,” she says, and hops up off the couch, grabbing her mug along the way.

“You say that now,” he points out as he follows her to the kitchen, hands her his mug to rinse out. (He watches the nauseating concoction trickle down the drain with vicious satisfaction).

She just giggles.

“Don’t worry so much, it’ll give you frown lines,” she says lightly, and then she starts pulling on her shoes. “So...I think I need to talk to him for a minute. Before the gala.”

Patrick raises an eyebrow and glances at his watch.

“You know you only have an hour before you have to start getting ready, right?” he says, which is foolish because Tessa is always on time. Usually early, in fact.

“Yeah, I know,” she says breezily as she laces up her sneakers. “I’m not going to have the whole thing out with him right now. There’s way too much to talk about in half an hour, and there are big decisions to make, and this doesn’t make everything automatically perfect, but...anyway. I just want to tell him that I _want_ to talk about it. You know, when we’re both ready.”

He raises both eyebrows this time.

“So...I’m gathering you’d like me to make myself scarce for half an hour or so, is that it?”

She at least has the grace to blush.

“Umm...yes? If you don’t mind,” she says, and then looks up at him with that pleading expression that almost always means she’s about to get her way. He _hates_ it when she uses that one.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “I’ll go hang out with Eric and Keegan and pretend that two of my best friends are not having _oh good, you still adore me_ sex in my room. It’ll be fun.”

She smacks him on the arm and grabs her room key.

“Shut up,” she orders as he follows her out the door. They start walking down the passage to the elevators together, and he grins a little as he matches her stride.

“So…” he says, drawing out the vowel sound. “What are you going to tell the media when you get home?”

He thinks he could cut granite with the sharpened line of her jaw.

“Fucking nothing,” she says succinctly. He tries hard not to snicker, because Tessa Virtue saying _fuck_ is still kind of funny.

“Really?”

“Really,” she says, fiercely. “We don’t owe them a damn thing. Whatever this is, whatever this turns into, is none of their _fucking_ business, and I have no intention of giving them so much as a single sound byte until we’re walking down the goddamn aisle.”

Patrick grins, because Tessa on a roll is absolutely _badass_. It’s extremely enjoyable, as long as he’s not on the receiving end.

“Fair enough,” he says. “Although you may have to persuade Scott to go along with that.”

She arches one eyebrow in an expression that reminds him a bit of a queen handing down a royal edict.

“He won’t have a problem with it,” she says coolly. Patrick smothers another grin and watches her stalk down the hallway as if it’s her personal runway.

“Tess?”

“What?” She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, and he catches a bit of steel remaining in her gaze.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, and means it down to his toes. She smiles then, very sweetly, and reaches out to touch his arm.

“Thank you,” she says. “I owe you, Chiddy. We both do.”

They stop at the elevators; he’s headed up to the seventh floor, while she’s going to the third. She puts both hands on his shoulders so that he’s turned to face her and looks him dead in the eye.

“You’re a good friend, Patrick,” she says, very seriously. “I’m lucky to have you. We’re both lucky to have you.”

He smiles at her, his throat tight. Still one of his favourite people, and always will be.

“Right back at you,” he says, and reaches over to hug her. When they break apart after a moment, she grins at him cheerfully and steps through the opening doors of the elevator.

“And I solemnly promise that we won’t have sex on your bed,” she stage-whispers as the doors close.

He punches the up button and shakes his head.

Sometimes, the two of them are just too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...you may wholeheartedly disagree with my characterization of Tessa here. Feel free to tell me if you see this as completely off, but here’s the rationale. 
> 
> First of all, I decided to write Tessa as both as an incredibly confident, talented, and brilliant woman who, like everybody, has some weak spots. In this fic one of her biggest weak spots is the idea that Scott is not going to stick around and/or they won't be able to make it work post-competition. That fear is so big that she refuses to address it head-on by talking to him or otherwise dealing with it in a semi-healthy manner, and the longer she puts off dealing with it, the bigger it grows. It’s a vicious cycle.
> 
> The clincher here is the idea Tessa has that Scott’s not in this for the long haul (which I admit may be the oddest thing about this chapter, because he _so obviously is_ ). In my headcanon, when they decide to retire after Sochi, T expects that Scott will stick around and that they’ll eventually get together in a genuine way now that the pressure of competing is over. (I am shamelessly borrowing this from pumpkinpasties excellent work "Dirty Valentine.") She doesn’t actually verbalize it, though, and when he goes off the rails a bit and starts seeing other girls, she’s heartbroken. She figures it’s her, that if he really wanted her, retirement would be the time to say so. Therefore, she assumes that she's not what he truly wants in terms of a lasting relationship and never will be. 
> 
> And so for her, their comeback isn’t about getting back together with him on a personal level, because she’s not willing to risk that again. It’s about skating, and winning, and redemption, but she absolutely does not plan on the romantic angle. The fact that it happens anyway freaks her the hell out, which is part of why she’s so terrified to trust that this is real and permanent. She thinks she absolutely cannot go through that kind of pain again, and so it’s better to just assume that things are temporary and leave it at that. 
> 
> Naturally, hearing that Scott’s looking at wedding rings kind of lays that idea to rest. Is she immediately ready to lay all the big questions of the future to the side just because of that? No. Absolutely not. Does she suddenly have confirmation that he loves her in a very permanent sense, despite the fact that she refused to talk about the future? Yes. Hence the violent swing to happy excitement.
> 
> Anyway. That’s my ridiculously long essay on my characterization of Tessa Virtue in this chapter. If you read this entire thing, you get all the Internet points. (You heard me - ALL OF THEM.) 
> 
> Let me know what you think - I always love hearing from y’all! And thanks again for reading. :)


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